This chapter contains sections titled: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually-given reasons for belief and desire-based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to ‘monitor’ and ‘regulate’ our (...) believing-on-the-basis-of-perception and our acting-on-the-basis-of-desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as ‘I’ rather than ‘it’. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, ‘transformative’ framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from diverse domains within a philosophical anthropological framework, I have presented a cognitive and evolutionary approach to the question of why humans, but not other animals engage in such activities. Through an application of cognitive and evolutionary perspectives to the study of these behaviors, I have sought (...) to provide a more solid footing for philosophical anthropological discussions of uniquely human behavior. In particular, I have argued that art, religion and science, which are usually seen as achievements that are quite remote from ordinary modes of reasoning, are subserved by evolved cognitive processes that serve functions in everyday cognitive tasks, that arise early and spontaneously in cognitive development, that are shared cross-culturally, and that have evolved in response to selective pressures in our ancestral past. These mundane cognitive processes provide a measuring rod with which we can assess a diversity of cultural phenomena; they form a unified explanatory framework to approach human culture. I have argued that we can explain uncommon thoughts in terms of interactions between common minds. This dissertation is subdivided into four parts. Part I outlines the problem of human uniqueness, examining theories on how humans conceptualize the world, and what their mental tool box looks like. Part II discusses the evolutionary and cognitive origins of human artistic behavior. Part III focuses on the cognitive science of religion, especially on how it can be applied to the reasoning of theologians and philosophers of religion. Part IV considers the cognitive basis of scientific practice. (shrink)

[NOTE: THE ENTIRE TEXT OF THE PRINT VERSION OF THIS BOOK CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM "CHAPTERS" BELOW, DIVIDED INTO 48 SEGMENTS: TABLE OF CONTENTS, INTRODUCTION, 45 CHAPTERS, AND CONCLUSION AND EPILOGUE.] -/- Whatever the circumstances and states of our happiness might be, we all can benefit from clarifying our understanding of happiness and from solidifying our conduct in favor of happiness on the basis of such an understanding. In trying to develop such a basis, I ended up pursuing the philosophy (...) of happiness as a subject of deep, original inquiry. I found there had been no adequate investigation of happiness throughout human existence up to this point although happiness had formed and continued to be the subject of many philosophical and other efforts. It seemed that the collective human conscious kept searching for answers because it kept realizing that the essence of happiness and how to achieve it continued to be insufficiently illuminated or distorted in mirages. -/- My Philosophy of Happiness book is dedicated to lifting individual humans and humanity out of this confusion and resulting unnecessary unhappiness. My handling of the subject is comprehensive and thorough. My work focuses on equipping us to find clarity about happiness in general and our happiness in particular and to identify and apply appropriate means to overcome problems that can be overcome. It also endeavors to have us find peace with circumstances we cannot change. Its goal is to enable us to develop our own philosophy of happiness to maturity and to apply that philosophy successfully. -/- My book investigates in a thorough manner what happiness is and how we might create happiness. It is written as a theoretical and practical guide. It is intended as a self-help book for personal development. Its comprehensive inquiry also makes it a philosophy book that does not require prior philosophical training. It does not dwell on the rudimentary and often failed attempts of other philosophers regarding happiness but constitutes a new beginning. Striving to cover all facets of human pursuits of happiness, the book's considerations in­clude topics of law, economics, political science, sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, biology, and physics. It approaches the pursuit of happiness not as an art but from the standpoint of science. Its examination reveals happiness as an intensely individual phenomenon as well as a systematic force that shapes the human condition, human destiny, and matters beyond up to a cosmic scale. -/- The book illuminates these subjective and objective functions of happiness. Its insights about the nature of happiness may help us to understand the general subject matters of our search as well as the general terrain and rules by which we must abide in our pursuit of happiness. However, it does not presume to know what specific objectives and pursuits will make us happy. Rather, it develops, describes, and encourages us to discover tools to find, understand, and define our personal happiness and to pursue the implementation of this vision with optimized preparedness. Its objective is not to indoctrinate but to empower us. -/- The book proposes that humans are generally endowed with all internal constituents and mechanisms to develop their happiness to its fullest possible extent. Unless our faculties are pathologically impeded, we might only have to become aware of these inherent forces to actuate them. Still, we have to do some work before we can systematically increase our happiness. This seems to be a function of comprehensively revealing our concept of happiness and permitting it to take its natural place. The mission of the book is to assist in this process. Finding what makes us happy requires that we attain knowledge of who we are and of what we want. It requires us to be mindful of our wishes, our needs, our personality. Once we understand our motivations, we must arrange and implement them to their best effect in relation to one another, our capacities, other humans, and our nonhuman environment. The book supports us in gaining these insights and in the resulting choices and tasks on our path toward a happier, if not a happy, life and a better world. -/- The book further examines how much happiness we can expect to obtain even under the best circumstances when we maximize our happiness. It describes external and internal constraints that threaten our achievements. But it also shows perspectives that may enable us to conquer limitations. Thus, we may not only gain clarity about our happiness but also confidence in its pursuit. -/- This seminal treatise arrives at a time when there are promising signs that humanity may become receptive to the idea that happiness is the core objective motivating our being and that we ought to dedicate more attention to it not only on a personal but also on higher levels. Individuals around the world give increased consideration to their happiness and how their treatment of surroundings affects it. This is reflected in a growing interest in self-improvement literature that beyond purely individual concerns includes social and environmental connections. In addition, happiness has transcended the scientific domain of philosophers and is becoming an acknowledged subject of empirical research. Countries have been turning toward happiness as indication for the success of societal undertakings. International organizations are advancing this idea as well. Beyond efforts expressly focusing on happiness, there are many undertakings and movements that impliedly pursue it by trying to advance some of its components or by attempting to abate ills that stand in its way. -/- However, without solid philosophical foundation and counsel, personal, societal, and supra-national efforts regarding happiness may not reach far, may become misguided, or may not be sustainable. My Philosophy of Happiness book provides the necessary philosophical foundation and counsel on all three levels. The book is currently available in hardcover, a two-volume paperback edition, as well as in Kindle, EPUB, and PDF e-book versions. (shrink)

Could an artificial intelligence become a legal person? As of today, this question is only theoretical. No existing computer program currently possesses the sort of capacities that would justify serious judicial inquiry into the question of legal personhood. The question is nonetheless of some interest. Cognitive science begins with the assumption that the nature of human intelligence is computational, and therefore, that the human mind can, in principle, be modelled as a program that runs on a computer. Artificial intelligence (...) (AI) research attempts to develop such models. But even as cognitive science has displaced behavioralism as the dominant paradigm for investigating the human mind, fundamental questions about the very possibility of artificial intelligence continue to be debated. This Essay explores those questions through a series of thought experiments that transform the theoretical question whether artificial intelligence is possible into legal questions such as, "Could an artificial intelligence serve as a trustee?" What is the relevance of these legal thought experiments for the debate over the possibility of artificial intelligence? A preliminary answer to this question has two parts. First, putting the AI debate in a concrete legal context acts as a pragmatic Occam's razor. By reexamining positions taken in cognitive science or the philosophy of artificial intelligence as legal arguments, we are forced to see them anew in a relentlessly pragmatic context. Philosophical claims that no program running on a digital computer could really be intelligent are put into a context that requires us to take a hard look at just what practical importance the missing reality could have for the way we speak and conduct our affairs. In other words, the legal context provides a way to ask for the "cash value" of the arguments. The hypothesis developed in this Essay is that only some of the claims made in the debate over the possibility of AI do make a pragmatic difference, and it is pragmatic differences that ought to be decisive. Second, and more controversially, we can view the legal system as a repository of knowledge-a formal accumulation of practical judgments. The law embodies core insights about the way the world works and how we evaluate it. Moreover, in common-law systems judges strive to decide particular cases in a way that best fits the legal landscape-the prior cases, the statutory law, and the constitution. Hence, transforming the abstract debate over the possibility of AI into an imagined hard case forces us to check our intuitions and arguments against the assumptions that underlie social decisions made in many other contexts. By using a thought experiment that explicitly focuses on wide coherence, we increase the chance that the positions we eventually adopt will be in reflective equilibrium with our views about related matters. In addition, the law embodies practical knowledge in a form that is subject to public examination and discussion. Legal materials are published and subject to widespread public scrutiny and discussion. Some of the insights gleaned in the law may clarify our approach to the artificial intelligence debate. (shrink)

If the possible ends of art criticism are taken to include not only the provision of a detailed evaluation of the artwork, but, cognately, an elaboration upon how one has been, or believes oneself to have been, changed by a particular artistic encounter, then the very praxis of art criticism stands to benefit from a theoretical elucidation of the possible nature of the subjective transformations that may flow from the critical appreciation of art. We are entitled to enquire, in particular, (...) into the conditions under which, and indeed the extent to which, such putative change at the personal level can be explicated in moral epistemological terms. It is pertinent in this context also to investigate the phenomenal character of the experiences that have been operative and their essential structures; to enquire, in short, into the phenomenology of the transformative artistic encounter. In this thesis, the bearing, in particular, of intersubjectivity upon the content and modalities of disclosure in a literary context will be investigated. It will be shown how an understanding of the relevance of intersubjectivity to the phenomenology of literary experience can inform an assessment of the claims of literary aesthetic moral cognitivism. Yet the intention to clarify the connection between literary experience and intersubjectivity also requires reflection upon what it is in the first place to encounter someone else, and to apperceive a foreign subjectivity and its motivations. For this reason, the contributions of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to the investigation of the phenomenology of empathy will be discussed and evaluated. This discussion will in turn be shown to be of assistance in clarifying the role of the imagination in the apperception and comprehension of another person’s mental life. The thought of Jean Starobinski will prove to elucidate the question of why the insights of the phenomenological tradition are highly pertinent to the investigation of literary experience, and to the development, in particular, of a conception of an imagined ‘Other’ who is (in a sense that will be clarified) embedded within the literary text, a person, that is, to whom one might coherently refer as the “implied author”. For reasons which will emerge in the course of this study, it will be argued that authentic empathy, in its fulfilling explication (in the Steinian sense), is given to the empathising consciousness in the manner of a semblance, and, consonantly, that the phenomenological structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to pictureconsciousness. The epistemological significance of literature’s capacities for moral suggestion will be explicated principally in terms of the unfolding of values within the human personality, and in terms of the disclosure of the phenomenal character and structures of virtuous experience. It will be explained why the structure of empathy has implications for the aesthetic value of literature. The question of the relation between aesthetic and ethical value will be clarified. In this context, it will be argued on phenomenological grounds that the appresentation of moral virtue in an implied author could contribute to the aesthetic value of a literary work, although it will also be shown that implied authorial moral virtue could conflict irremediably with other qualities like moral doubt and uncertainty, which may themselves be important sources of aesthetic value. For this reason, the thesis will conclude by challenging the ethicist view that an aesthetically relevant ethical flaw in a literary work must count as an aesthetic flaw. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant and the Capacity to Judge; Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason by Beatrice LonguenesseMichelle GreerBeatrice Longuenesse. Kant and the Capacity to Judge; Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Translation by Charles T. Wolfe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 420. Cloth, $59.50.Kant and the Capacity to Judge is a translation (...) of Longuenesse’s Kant et Pouvoir de juger, although Longuenesse has revised and added to the original version. The central argument seeks to demonstrate the essential role played by the logical forms of judgment in the arguments of Kant’s first Critique. Longuenesse emphasizes straight away Kant’s efforts (in the Metaphysical Deduction) to deduce a set of pure concepts from the logical forms of judgment. Against many standard readings, she aims to reveal the very “tight” connection between this attempt and subsequent arguments in the Transcendental [End Page 372] Analytic. That Kant takes the functions of judgment to be relevant to these arguments is hardly a novel claim. The originality of Longuenesse’s work, however, stems both from the central and pervasive role she assigns to the logical forms of judgment, and from the impressive, painstaking effort she makes to sustain the close connection between these forms and Kant’s subsequent arguments. According to Longuenesse, any proper understanding of the arguments of the Transcendental Analytic absolutely depends upon relating these “down to the minutest details of their proofs,” to the role of the logical forms (5).These minute details do not escape Longuenesse in her subsequent elaboration on this original thesis. Given the length and detail of her work, I can only highlight a few of the central points and strategies. One should note from the outset, however, that the detail and the scholarship evinced to support her claims constitute much of what is of value in the book. Many of these “supporting arguments” and discussions, which include efforts to trace Kantian conceptions back to their historical/philosophical origins, stand in their own right as independent contributions to Kant scholarship and interpretation.The work is divided into three parts. The first part is essentially propaedeutic. Longuenesse begins by drawing a distinction between the potential or capacity to judge and judgement itself (i.e., the “actualization” of this judgmental capacity under [externally grounded] sensory stimulation) (7). Taking this distinction as her cue, Longuenesse seeks to reveal the way in which the line of argumentation in the transcendental analytic presents an extended investigation into the formal capacity (ibid). The centrality of the logical forms of judgment is secured early on by assigning them a substantive role in the very presentation of something in intuition “as” an “object.” Insofar as she assigns this role to the logical forms themselves, her account clearly undercuts the primary function of the categories in this regard. Relevant here is Longuenesse’s construal of “appearances” as the intentional correlates of our representational capacities and activities (cf. 20–21). Given this, the problem now motivating the transcendental deduction is how to make sense of the relation between this “internalized” object of (indeterminate) empirical intuition (the appearance) and the object corresponding to intuition which concepts allow one to think in a determinate way (the phenomenon). This ability to think the object in a determinate fashion appears to be the essential contribution made by judgement.These preliminary considerations ground Longuenesse’s efforts (in Part Two) to isolate and examine the discursive activity of judgment. Longuenesse stresses the reflective (and not simply the determinative) role of judgment and its forms. Indeed, she suggests that concepts (not merely empirical concepts, but also the pure concepts of the understanding themselves) are formed by reflecting (through acts of comparison, reflection, and abstraction) on the “sensible given.” Drawing extensively from the Logic, she interestingly argues that the form of judgment itself carries with it some inherent claim to objectivity. Thus, objectivity is folded into the formal activity of judging by being identified as a “normative propensity” inherent in every judgment by virtue of its form alone (87–88). Longuenesse accordingly eschews efforts to downplay the role of the logical use of the... (shrink)

Traditionally, analytic philosophers writing on aesthetics have given short shrift to nature. The last thirty years, however, have seen a steady growth of interest in this area. The essays and books now available cover central philosophical issues concerning the nature of the aesthetic and the existence of norms for aesthetic judgement. They also intersect with important issues in environmental philosophy. More recent contributions have opened up new topics, such as the relationship between natural sound and music, the beauty of animals, (...) and the aesthetics of gardens. Using these materials, it is now easy to include a module on the aesthetics of nature as one part of an introductory course on aesthetics, or even to design an entire upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar around the topic. Author Recommends: Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Readers coming fresh to contemporary debates may find the lack of attention to natural beauty in twentieth-century philosophy somewhat puzzling. This paper, which defends the view that nature cannot be aesthetically appreciated as such, presents this attitude in a particularly pure form. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This seminal essay marks the beginning of contemporary discussion of the aesthetics of nature. Many of its ideas and themes continue to reverberate in contemporary debates. Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000). This volume is a collection of Carlson's influential essays on environmental aesthetics. Chapters 4 and 5, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment' and 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', set the agenda for much subsequent discussion in the aesthetics of nature. Chapter 6, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', develops and defends the controversial idea that nature, unlike art, is always aesthetically good. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). In this paper, Berleant presents his influential idea of an 'engaged aesthetics' for nature. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. This article develops Saito's idea that ethical considerations play a critical role in the aesthetics of nature, and presents a novel argument for Positive Aesthetics for nature. Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). This book collects Budd's papers on the aesthetics of nature, which contain important criticisms of Carlson's natural environmental model and the notion of Positive Aesthetics for nature. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This paper argues for the importance of aesthetic appreciation that emphasizes emotional responses to nature. A philosophically sophisticated and influential treatment by a leading aesthetician. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. In this essay, an environmental philosopher gives careful and thorough consideration to the place of aesthetic considerations in environmental protection, focusing on Carlson's work. John Andrew Fisher, 'What the Hills are Alive With: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 167–79. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Most discussions of nature aesthetics focus on visual experiences; this essay is the first philosophical study of the aesthetics of natural sounds. A nuanced and original paper. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant. 'Introduction: The Aesthetics of Nature'. The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), 11–42. A comprehensive review of the literature, this essay contains the best available bibliography on the subject. Online Materials: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id=17 Teaching Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's article on the American Society for Aesthetics Web site. http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/ Volume 6 of AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique: Papers by Thomas Heyd and Ira Newman on Allen Carlson's book Aesthetics and the Environment, along with a response from Carlson. http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=400 Paradoxes and Puzzles: Appreciating Gardens and Urban Nature: An essay by Stephanie Ross in the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics. Sample Syllabus for a three-week module in an undergraduate aesthetics course: This three week module can easily be adapted to fit shorter available class time or reduced reading expectations for students. A lighter two-week module, for instance, would drop the Hepburn reading and do either the Carroll essay or the Saito essay, but not both. Note that all readings for this module are reprinted in Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Reading: Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Discussion of Hepburn's essay will allow the instructor to bring out the distinctive issues and themes of the aesthetics of nature. Week 2: Objectivity or Subjectivity? Readings: Allen Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267–76. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. This section covers two very different approaches to thinking about the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Consideration of these provides an opportunity for students to reflect on nature's relationship to art, and on the character of aesthetic experience itself. Week 3: Pluralistic Approaches Readings: Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. This section considers approaches that are motivated by perceived limitations of the two approaches mentioned above. In discussing these, students will focus on the significance, for the aesthetics of nature, of emotion and also of broader ethical considerations. Sample Syllabus for an upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar: Books on Syllabus: Glenn Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature [AN] (London: Continuum Press, forthcoming November 2008). Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture [AE] (London: Routledge, 2000). Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments [ANE] (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Parsons, AN, ch. 1. Allen Carlson, 'Environmental Aesthetics'. The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes (London: Routledge, 2001), 423–36. Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in ANE. Week 2: Imagination Parsons, AN, ch. 2. Thomas Heyd, 'Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories About Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2001): 125–37. Reprinted in ANE. Emily Brady, 'Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 139–47. Reprinted in ANE. Marcia Eaton, 'Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 149–56. Reprinted in ANE. Week 3: Formalism Parsons, AN, ch. 3. Carlson, 'Formal Qualities and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 3. Allen Carlson, 'On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty'. Landscape Planning 4 (1977): 131–72. Ira Newman, 'Reflections on Allen Carlson's Aesthetics and the Environment'. AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique 6 (2001) http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/Carlson/newman.html>. Nick Zangwill, 'Formal Natural Beauty'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 21 (2001): 209–24. Week 4: Science and Nature Aesthetics Parsons, AN, ch. 4. Aldo Leopold, 'Country'. A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1966), 177–80. Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 4. Carlson, 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', AE, ch. 5. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 358–72. Week 5: Positive Aesthetics Carlson, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', AE, ch. 6. Eugene Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Denton, TX: Environmental Ethics Books, 1996), ch. 6. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. Malcolm Budd, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000): 137–57. Glenn Parsons, 'Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics'. British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 279–95. Week 6: Animals Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]), Pt. III, sec. VI. Holmes Rolston III, 'Beauty and the Beast: Aesthetic Experience of Wildlife'. Valuing Wildlife: Economic and Social Perspectives. Eds. Daniel J. Decker and Gary R. Goff (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 187–96. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetic Value of Animals'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2007): 151–69. Week 7: Pluralism Parsons, AN, ch. 5. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in ANE. Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Reprinted in ANE. Ronald Hepburn, 'Nature Humanized: Nature Respected'. Environmental Values 7 (1998): 267–79. Ronald Hepburn, 'Trivial and Serious in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 65–80. Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, 'New Formalism and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 363–76. Week 8: Engagement Parsons, AN, ch. 6. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in ANE. Cheryl Foster, 'The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 127–37. Reprinted in ANE. Allen Carlson, 'Aesthetics and Engagement'. British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 220–27. Week 9: The Sublime Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1790]). Excerpts from sections 23–9. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]). Excerpts from Pt. II, sections 1–8. Ronald Hepburn, 'The Concept of the Sublime: Has it any Relevance for Philosophy Today?'. Dialectics and Humanism 15 (1988): 137–55. Stan Godlovitch, 'Icebreakers: Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics'. Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1994): 15–30. Reprinted in ANE. Malcolm Budd, 'Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Part I: The Sublime in Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 38 (1998): 233–50. Week 10: Aesthetic Preservation Parsons, AN, ch. 7. Janna Thompson, 'Aesthetics and the Value of Nature'. Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 291–305. Holmes Rolston III, 'From Beauty to Duty: Aesthetics of Nature and Environmental Ethics'. Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics. Ed. Arnold Berleant (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 127–41. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. Keekok Lee, 'Beauty for Ever?'. Environmental Values 4 (1995): 213–25. Week 11: Gardens Parsons, AN, ch. 8. Mara Miller, The Garden as an Art (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), ch. 1. Mara Miller, 'Gardens as Works of Art: The Problem of Uniqueness'. British Journal of Aesthetics 26 (1986): 252–6. Stephanie Ross, What Gardens Mean (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chs. 1, 7. Tom Leddy, 'Gardens in an Expanded Field'. British Journal of Aesthetics 28 (1988): 327–40. David Cooper, 'In Praise of Gardens'. British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2003): 101–13. Week 12: Art in Nature Parsons, AN, ch. 9. Carlson, 'Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?', AE, ch. 10. Sheila Lintott, 'Ethically Evaluating Land Art: Is It Worth It?'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 263–77. Emily Brady, 'Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 287–300. Focus Questions1. Are there any important differences between the aesthetic appreciation of art and the aesthetic appreciation of nature? If so, what are they?2. Is preserving nature for its aesthetic value a coherent idea?3. What is the ugliest natural thing or place you can think of? How might proponents of Positive Aesthetics for nature deal with your example?4. Does the concept of the sublime have any significance for our contemporary experience of nature? If it does, what relation does it bear to our aesthetic appreciation of nature?5. Watch Rivers and Tides (2001), the documentary film about the British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. Ethically speaking, how do you think we ought to regard his art-making? (shrink)

Subjectivism is the mainstream view of practical reason. According to subjectivism, what has value for an agent must ultimately be grounded in what the agent actually desires. Subjectivism is motivated by a conservative view of the scope and extent of practical reason. Against this view, my dissertation argues that any coherent conception of an end must endow practical reason with a scope that goes beyond anything that subjectivism could accommodate. ;Subjectivism correctly grasps that nothing can count as an end for (...) an agent if she is incapable of recognizing it as such; value cannot exist independently of our capacity to appreciate it. I argue that the right conclusion to draw from this is that practical reason constitutes its own object by properly judging on practical matters. The grounds for taking a certain object to bear value lie not in the attributes of a certain object but in the nature of the activity of pursuing ends. According to the concept of practical reason I defend in this dissertation, which I call "the constitutive conception of practical reason", practical reason must set its objects from its own resources rather than find them in an external reality. ;But if practical reason does not track any independently existing objects, how can we distinguish between correct and incorrect judgements? It seems that this conception faces a dilemma: Either the activity of reason is merely a source of formal constraints, or it is an arbitrary, ungrounded exercise. I argue that this dilemma gets its grip on us only from an illegitimate separation of the rational and non-rational parts of human nature. This separation leads us to to think of our cognitive and conative powers as independent. However, the proper understanding of practical reason requires us to see our desires, emotions, etc. as presenting us with appearances of the good, as providing perspectives on something which we represent as the proper object of our pursuit. In forming an overarching conception of the good by reflectively assessing the claims of these different perspectives, practical reason sets its object. (shrink)

A decolonial practice and understanding of education (whether theological or otherwise) requires engaging, subverting, deposing and reimagining a whole ecology of imaginaries, practices, structures, institutionalities, traditions, power asymmetries etc.: a task that is far beyond the capacities of any individual, community or even generation. Cognisant of this reality, the article foregrounds the question of pedagogy in theological education (but only as an integral part of the colonial/decolonial ecology of education) and argues that in so far as our pedagogies in (...) theological education treat students primarily as ‘thinking creatures’, we are engaging in a dis-membering pedagogy that reproduces the coloniality of being. I identify a Cartesian anthropology (‘ego cogito sum’) – engendering a host of dualisms giving artificial supremacy to certain dimensions of reality over others – as a key animating source of dis-membering pedagogies. Drawing on the ‘pedagogical excess’ (i.e. underexplored pedagogical themes) in the theological anthropology of Simon Maimela in conversation with pedagogical visions that cohere and extend his anthropological commitments, I argue that a re-membering pedagogy is, at minimum: a pedagogy of performative action, embodiment and (community based) liminality. I argue throughout the article that in the work of re-sourcing our animating anthropologies and re-imagining our pedagogies, we are engaged in the healing work of re-membering that which coloniality has torn apart: theory and practice, mind and body, the individual and relationality, the student and the teacher, the theological school and society. Contribution: This article outlines my attempts to theoretically and theologically ground (and extend) my espoused pedagogical commitments forged at the intersection of my community work and teaching as a theological educator in an undergraduate BTh programme. This article invites other theological educators to become conscious of the theological anthropology that their espoused pedagogical commitments assume and reflect on the pedagogical commitments that their theological anthropology entails, especially as it relates to the ongoing calls for the Africanisation/decolonisation of theological education in South Africa. (shrink)

Doxasticism about our awareness of normative (i.e. justifying) reasons – the view that we can recognise reasons for forming attitudes or performing actions only by means of normative judgements or beliefs – is incompatible with the following triad of claims: -/- (1) Being motivated (i.e. forming attitudes or performing actions for a motive) requires responding to and, hence, recognising a relevant reason. -/- (2) Infants are capable of being motivated. -/- (3) Infants are incapable of normative judgement or belief. -/- (...) It should be clear that (3) is true, given that infants lack the required reflective and conceptual capacities. So doxasticists have to reject either (1) or (2) (or both). But this forced choice may be understood as a dilemma for doxasticism. On the hand, doxasticists may adopt a Kantian approach and reject (2), precisely because they think that motivation presupposes the doxastic recognition of reasons, and because infants lack the capacity to doxastically recognise reasons. But this choice seems to wrongly reduce the responses of infants to mere reflexes or instinctive reactions. On the other hand, doxasticists may choose a Humean route and deny (1) by espousing a purely causal or teleological account of motivation. But this would mean detrimentally ignoring the normative nature of (some instances of) motivation. -/- One elegant way of avoiding this dilemma is to give up doxasticism and instead endorse experientialism – the view that we enjoy some experiential access to reasons, which is independent of, and perhaps more fundamental than, our capacity to form normative judgements and beliefs. In this talk, I would like to provide an argument for the existence of such a non-doxastic form of access to reasons. More specifically, I aim to defend the claim that our basic awareness of reasons is phenomenal in nature. What this means is that it forms part of our access from the inside to those of our mental episodes that provide us with access to reasons. In other words, when we introspectively attend to reason-giving mental episodes and what they are about, we have the impression of the presence of a reason for us. My defence of this experientialist alternative to doxasticism will primarily focus on perceptual reasons for first-order beliefs about the external world. (shrink)

This article introduces practical and theoretical investigations in fields of art and technology related to biotelematics, hybridization and transcultural experimentation based on research carried out over the last four years at the Nucleus of Art and New Organisms (NANO). We will approach this subject by considering three main points of view: field theory (Ascott 1980; Nóbrega 2009); the concept of coherence (Ho 1993; Ho & Popp 1989; Simondon 1980); and the state of connectedness (Ascott 2006). These will act as (...) integrative models for the understanding of an emerging hybrid organic structure presented as an aesthetic organism (Nóbrega 2009). The concept of field theory is applied as a working model for the systemic role of information within the immaterial, invisible, dynamical flow that intercommunicates natural (i.e. humans and other living systems) and artificial (i.e. machine) organisms in the process of invention, as well as in the fruition of artwork. In terms of the concept of coherence, we propose the idea of artworks as transducers of energy; more specifically, as resonators of coherent fields that interconnect the artist and audience in an integrated, dynamical whole. Furthermore, we approach the state of connectedness as a fundamental notion for the dynamics involved in the invention, exhibition and absorption of contemporary artworks. NANO Lab’s involvement with artistic research is not only understood as a physical space for experimentation, but also as an environment in which our practice reflects concepts applied in artistic work. In this sense, we can highlight two theoretical references (other than Roy Ascott’s work) which guide this methodology: Humberto Maturana (2001; Varela & Maturana 1992) and the idea of a conserved ‘autopoiesis’, a systematic medium (space) in which all recursive dynamics of reciprocal interactions occur to sustain the survival of life, processes and systems, and where technology can be conceived as a powerful instrument/medium to expand our knowledge about structural and sensitive coherences within living and non-living systems; and, Jorge de Albuquerque Vieira’s (2006; 2009) approach to art as a type of knowledge related to any process that guarantees the permanence or survival of a system based on three major characteristics for the survival of an open system – sensitivity (to operate information flows), memory (to transfer and retain information), and capability (to elaborate or prepare information according to its needs). (shrink)

This dissertation articulates our human capacity to judge as a capacity for knowledge, specifically for empirical knowledge, and for knowledge of itself as such. I interpret and draw on the account of such knowledge presented by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, situate this account historically, and relate it to relevant contemporary debates. The first chapter motivates my project by assessing the insights and shortcomings of Cartesian epistemology. I argue that while Descartes draws on the essential self-consciousness of judgement to (...) show that the cogito is knowledge, he fails, by his own standards, to secure this status for any judgement beyond the cogito. I conclude that self-consciousness alone is empty, but that, since we can judge beyond the cogito, judgement can be given content from elsewhere. The next chapter evaluates the empiricist doctrine that operations of the senses by themselves give content to judgement and can vindicate it as empirical knowledge. I contend that Kant deepens Hume’s finding, that empiricism fails to enable us to explain empirical knowledge, into the more radical insight that empiricism fails to enable us to understand the senses as providing any content. I conclude that the senses alone are blind and that our account of empirical knowledge must privilege neither sensory givenness nor intellectual self-consciousness. The third chapter contrasts two readings of Kant on the cooperation between sensibility and understanding in empirical knowledge. I argue, against many Kantians, that the Transcendental Deduction shows that instead of understanding this cooperation compositionally – so that operations of sensibility are intelligible independently of acts of the understanding – we must conceive of it hylomorphically – so that the operations of sensibility and understanding constitute the mutually dependent matter and form of empirical knowing respectively. The final chapter substantiates this hylomorphism by explicating the form of knowledge as synthesis. Following Kant, I argue that inference is a species of synthesis and provide a synthetic explanation of inference. The resulting account simultaneously illustrates synthesis, addresses a prominent contemporary problem regarding the nature of inference, and explains how our capacity to know provides not just isolated glimpses of empirical reality, but a unified conception of it. (shrink)

This investigation of time and space is motivated by gaps in our current understanding: by the lack of definitions, by our failure to appreciate the nature of these entities, by our inability to pin down their properties. The author's approach is based on two key ideas: The first idea is to seek the geo-historical origins of time and space concepts. A thorough investigation of a diversified archaeological corpus, allows him to draft coherent definitions; it furthermore gives clues as (...) to whether time and space were discovered or invented. The second idea is to define the units before trying to define space and time. The results presented here are unexpected: Time and space were not discovered in nature, but they were invented; time is not a phenomenon and space has no materiality; they are only concepts. This runs contrary to the opinion of most scientific and the philosophical authorities, although one would seek in vain for a theoretical validation of the conventional position. This book will provide much food for thought for philosophers and scientists, as well as interested general readers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding PartnershipThe Benefit of Sharing and the Capacity for ComplexityMichaela Amering (bio)Keywordsrecovery, empowerment, trialog, user involvement, schizophreniaIs There Ignorance and Arrogance? In Psychiatry? In Medicine?Adding insight to injury' is the paraphrase psychiatrist Pat McGorry (1992) coined for his reproach of 'pushing for "insight" or "acceptance of diagnosis"' without carefully taking into account the complexities of the individual situation, context, and needs. That must be about the kind of behavior (...) Marga Reimer has in mind in her paper on treatment adherence in the absence of insight, which depicts mental health professionals characterized by arrogance against the common sense of motivating compliance by perceived or anticipated benefits on different everyday life levels, but instead trying to get people to believe in a mental illness such as schizophrenia and wishing them to want treatment for that in the form of medication.In addition, Reimer presents examples from general medicine to make her point that adherence follows perceived or anticipated benefits instead of being a result of insight into a medical model of illness and McGorry (1992) also suggests that disregard for the active role that patients may play as reflected in psychiatry in terms such as 'case management' and 'compliance' "is a failing which extends to mainstream medicine and probably to most systems of human service delivery." On the other hand, Bill Anthony (2006), one of the most eminent experts on psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery in a personal report on his own medical illness, multiple sclerosis—MS, and the assistance he has been receiving in connection with it, describes the 'MS-Community' as exemplary with respect to instilling courage and hope, continually providing information and opportunities for exchange, and for never questioning a person's ultimate freedom of choice. In contrary, in mental health care he does not experience the medical profession as acting with full respect and support for its patients and suggests a great deal more work and transformation—especially concerning coercive treatments—ahead to follow this example. Similarly, it has been suggested that psychiatry should be better integrated into medicine to overcome stigma and discrimination of psychiatric health problems and interventions. A pertinent example of an initiative in this direction is the proposal of a fusion of mental health and incapacity legislation to arrive at ethically consistent legal situations with regard to involuntary [End Page 77] treatment across medicine (Dawson and Szmukler 2006).Is There Something Called Schizophrenia? and How Much Longer?Reimer's main example—schizophrenia—is the diagnosis that poses some of the greatest problems to the field and to the recognition of psychiatry as a scientific medical discipline. The current concept as well as the term 'schizophrenia' will probably not be around much longer; 'a century of schizophrenia is enough' (Kelly and Murray 2002). Suggested solutions for the problems of the diagnosis of schizophrenia concern the urgent complement of the categorical with a dimensional approach (Allardyce et al. 2007), a change also put forward as one of the essential remedies to undermine the stigma of mental illness that is often exacerbated by clinical diagnosis (Corrigan 2007). Such a move would also clearly help against the still prevalent experiences of users of services and their families and friends, whose hopes and dreams have been crushed and whose resilience has been undermined by clinical situations, which in times of psychotic crises, not only forced diagnoses but also prognoses—often scientifically unfounded—on them (Amering and Schmolke 2009).Is There a Solution? Can We Use Our Talents? And Those of People With a Lived Experience of Mental Health Problems and Care?Clinicians as well as scientists know that health, illness, and recovery occur in complex ways and contexts. People faced with mental health problems clearly realize the complexities of their situation and are especially motivated to appreciate the variety of factors and interactions that need to be integrated to arrive at a valid assessment. Ideally, the therapeutic relationship—essentially a partnership—holds a formidable chance of sharing efforts and creating the wisdom for finding and facing the truths necessary to develop solutions that can uphold and work in line with the complexities of human life.I would argue that psychiatric professionals are certainly part... (shrink)

There are two motivations commonly ascribed to historical actors for taking up statistics: to reduce complicated data to a mean value (e.g., Quetelet), and to take account of diversity (e.g., Galton). Different motivations will, it is assumed, lead to different methodological decisions in the practice of the statistical sciences. Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon are generally seen as following directly in Galton’s footsteps. I argue for two related theses in light of this standard interpretation, based on a reading (...) of several sources in which Weldon, independently of Pearson, reflects on his own motivations. First, while Pearson does approach statistics from this "Galtonian" perspective, he is, consistent with his positivist philosophy of science, utilizing statistics to simplify the highly variable data of biology. Weldon, on the other hand, is brought to statistics by a rich empiricism and a desire to preserve the diversity of biological data. Secondly, we have here a counterexample to the claim that divergence in motivation will lead to a corresponding separation in methodology. Pearson and Weldon, despite embracing biometry for different reasons, settled on precisely the same set of statistical tools for the investigation of evolution. (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can serve (...) to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 132-133 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology Donn Welton. The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi + 496. Cloth, $54.95. Few philosophers have been as ill-served by their reception as Husserl. The books he managed to publish during his lifetime provide a very limited perspective (...) on his thought but have determined what Donn Welton, in this magnificent treatise, calls the "Standard Interpretation," shared by analytic and deconstructionist readers alike, in which Husserl is a neo-Cartesian wedded to epistemological immanentism, methodological solipsism, and ontological idealism. That a very different Husserl is found in his vast Nachlass has long been known, but because of its sheer volume and relative inaccessibility it has had little impact on the Husserl-reception beyond a small circle of specialists. Hence in recovering the "Other" Husserl, Welton's aim is not the usual historical one of stripping away anachronistic readings to arrive at an original reception, but one of negating this Rezeptionsgeschichte to reveal a philosophy that has, in a certain sense, never been present.In this, the book succeeds wonderfully. Welton threads through the tangle of the Nachlass to reconstruct the unfulfilled "great systematic work" that occupied Husserl off and on from about 1920 until his death, uncovering thereby the revolutionary implications of Husserl's move from "static" to "genetic" phenomenology that force us to reconsider the Standard Interpretation point by point. While admitting that Husserl never abandoned his Cartesian proclivities altogether, Welton shows how these can be read as dependent moments in a system of "transcendental phenomenology" that ends up "much closer to Heidegger's approach than is usually thought" (233). The relevance for current debates in philosophy is made plain, such that Husserl is, at last, our contemporary.Briefly reviewing a book as ambitious as this inevitably distorts it, but let me comment on its central methodological claim. Transcendental phenomenology emerged from the pre-transcendental phenomenology of the Logische Untersuchungen when Husserl began seeking the "ultimate ground" for scientific cognition (chapters 1-4). This approach, dubbed the "Cartesian Way" by Husserl himself, generated the "Cartesian Enclosures" (chapter 5) of the Standard Interpretation: demanding evidence that is apodictic, adequate, and directly intuitive, Husserl identifies "transcendental subjectivity" with the individual, indeed solipsistic, "stream of consciousness" and interprets this ontologically as the "relativity" of the world. In his pivotal chapter 6, however, Welton shows that Husserl's reflections on time and memory forced him to admit that the "transcendental field" could not be secured by appeal to "adequate evidence" (154). Hence Husserl adopted a "Kantian Way" (158) that supplements intuitive evidence with elements of transcendental "construction" (148). The concept of transcendental "subjectivity" is thereby transformed from an egocentric stream of consciousness to an intersubjective, communicative, embodied, and historical site of the "transcendental genesis" of meaning.Chapters 7-9 detail how Husserl's increasing interest in the genesis of meaning in the 1920s calls forth this transformation. Tracing the problem on the levels of "speech" and "experience," Welton carefully elucidates how, in moving from static through constitutive to genetic analyses, Husserl came increasingly to see that his original "leading clue"--the phenomenon of cognitive act-intentionality--depended upon the passive syntheses and contexts of "motivation" that make up the world-horizon of pre-cognitive "life." Chapters 10 and 12 argue that Husserl's desire to force these insights into a Cartesian framework yielded the dead-end of "transcendental psychologism" and the dubious teleology of an ethico-political "one-worldism." Meanwhile in chapters 13-15, Welton sketches a phenomenologically more defensible concept of world as "horizon"--a nonperceptual, inherently plural, space of meaning structured as "context" (speech) and "background" (embodiment).Chapter 11 is central to the argument, since it describes how the Kantian notion of transcendental deduction ("construction") is to be integrated into phenomenological method. Things move very quickly. Welton relies heavily on Jay Rosenberg's idea that transcendental deduction is a species of "practical reasoning," and on Charles Taylor's... (shrink)

Context: The idea to write this paper sprang up in a casual conversation that led to the question of how the word “experience” would be translated into German. Distinctions between the German “Erleben” and “Erfahren,” and their intricacies with “Erkennen” and “Anerkennen,” soon led to the conviction that this was a thread worth pursuing. Problem: Much has been written about the nature of experience, but there is little consensus, to this day, regarding the role of consciousness in the process of (...) experiencing. Although RC acknowledges the significance of tacit or sensorimotor knowledge in the individual’s practical operating, it cannot admit it as a basis to the formation of conceptual structures that, by definition, are conscious. Method: Drawing from our backgrounds in epistemology and psychology, and a shared interest in Piaget’s psychogenetic approach, we investigate the origins and development of human experience, in this case the mastery of space, time, causation, and object-permanency. We focus on how “noticeable encounters” are gauged, reflected upon, and ultimately worked through, consciously or unconsciously, by the “experiencer.” Results: A child’s abilities to enact a certain action pattern in a given situation no more demonstrates a re-presentation of the pattern than does recognition in the case of objects. In his studies with children, Piaget has shown that the Kantian categories of space, time object, and “causality” are co-constitutive of the child’s own motion – and its felt impact – as a means to make the world cohere. Of importance here are the concepts of “effective causality,” felicitous encounters, and agency. Implications: Understanding the circumstances under which some “lived” events, whether self-initiated or striking as if out of nowhere, become noticeable and able affect a person’s life is a daunting task. This joint essay is no more than a conversation-starter and an invitation to further explore the intricacies between agency and causation, sensation and cognition, and, yes, motions and emotions in the making of consciousness itself. (shrink)

Respect for patient autonomy is paramount in resolving ethical tensions in end-of-life care. The concept of relational autonomy has contributed to this debate; however, scholars often use this concept in a fragmented manner. This leads to partial answers on ascertaining patients’ true wishes, meaningfully engaging patients’ significant others, balancing interests among patients and significant others, and determining clinicians’ obligations to change patients’ unconventional convictions to enhance patient autonomy. A satisfactory solution based on relational autonomy must incorporate patients’ competence (apart from (...) decisional capacity), authenticity (their true desires or beliefs) and the involvement level of their significant others. To that end, we argue that John Christman’s procedural approach to relational autonomy provides critical insights, such as the diachronic or socio-historical personhood, sustained critical reflection and his recent explication of the nature of asymmetrical relationships and helpful interlocutors. This study reviews Christman’s account, proposes minor modifications and advocates for an integrated three-dimensional model for medical decision-making. Clarifying the relationship among the three elements promotes an ethical framework with a coherent understanding of relational autonomy. This model not only provides a descriptive and normative framework for end-of-life care practice but also reconsiders the nature of the clinician–patient relationship and its normative implications. We further present a case study to illustrate the merits of our proposed model. Altogether, our proposal will help navigate complex medical decision-making, foster trust and negotiate shared values between patients and their significant others, particularly in end-of-life care. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

This essay reflects on the ability of neuroscientific data to be of personal value and to enrich our lives by offering insight into our capacities for self management and choice. The theory of cognitive dualism proposed by Roger Scruton seeks to preserve rationality and allow for freedom of will, but he appears reluctant to engage with the data accruing in neural studies. I contrast this approach with a Thomistic hylomorphic approach to the philosophy of mind that is founded on (...) participation in being. It offers the potential to draw on neurobiological knowledge for insights into rationality, motivation, and eudaimonia. The role of neural development in eudaimonia is considered and the benefits of a Thomistic hylomorphism founded on participation in esse are summarized. (shrink)

This thesis aims to elucidate an apparent paradox about the role of emotion in moral agency. A number of lines of concern suggest emotion may have serious negative impact on moral agency. On the other hand, there are considerations that suggest emotion also plays a crucial role in motivating, informing and even constituting moral agency. Significantly, there is a strong connection between participant reactive attitudes and ascription of moral status as agent or subject. Nonemotional agents could not hold such (...) attitudes. Also, removing participant reactive attitudes imposes a peculiar and incoherent form of solipsism about moral agency. Given this necessary role for emotion, can we give an account of emotion that will also meet the worries? I examine, as crucial examples, three recurrent lines of concern about emotion - that it threatens our capacities for objectivity, rationality, and autonomy - to tease out the descriptive assumptions about emotion, and the normative assumptions about moral agency, that these objections are based on. I then offer three lines of argument towards resolving these worries. The first addresses the worries directly, and the other two shift blame off emotion. First, then, I argue that the normative concerns can largely be met by a descriptive account that views emotion as cognitive. However, “judgementalist” cognitive accounts that assimilate emotion to belief may make emotion metaethically respectable at the cost of making it meta-ethically redundant. Also, such accounts are descriptively less than plausible. A better approach, I argue, is to allow that belief may play a significant role in emotion but to also allow at least a quasicognitive role to the distinctively affective element in emotion: feeling. I also argue for a hrther revision of cognitive accounts to emphasise that emotions reflect features of those who feel them. If we were different, our emotions would be different. So, secondly, I argue that a number of the features that power worries about emotions have their sources in what those who feel them are like, rather than in emotions as such. However, both human nature and emotion are capable of significant plasticity and diversity. We are also capable of a considerable - but not infinite - degree of self-determination both about what we are like and what our emotions are like. Finally, I argue that the normative assumptions that power the objections to emotion are themselves in need of revision - and in some tension with each other. This leads to a McGufin-theory of emotion in moral agency: Problems with emotion’s place in moral agency serve as indicators of unresolved tensions in our thinking about moral agency, rather than just indicators of problems with emotion as such. In view of this, I also argue for caution in any attempts to change emotion to fit particular ideals of moral agency. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of the link between Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. It does so by articulating a Kantian account of moral psychology by way of aesthetic reflective judgements of sublimity. Since judgements of sublimity enrich the picture of a Kantian subject by forcefully revealing the unbounded power of the faculty of reason, I investigate the possibility that judgements of this kind could serve as a basis for moral motivation. The paper first shows how judgements of sublimity (...) help a subject recognize reason's unbounded nature, and proceeds to analyse the practical effects of a subject judging itself sublime. When judgements of sublimity have as their object the unbounded and unsythesizable power of reason, they may thereby serve as the basis for both the recognition of our moral vocation, and the grounds for determining the will to act from respect for it. Since a judgement of sublimity produces for Kant the experience of an enlivening emotion and an outflowing of vital forces, the paper then develops Kant's concept of “life” motivated by a recognition of its practical orientation. In this way sublimity rather than beauty can be interpreted as symbolic hypotyposis of morality. The paper then takes up less favourable interpretations of the practical effects of self-predicated judgements of sublimity, and constructs critical responses to such positions. I conclude, following Adorno, by stressing the historical and social dimension of the capacities for both making sublime judgements, and being morally enlivened by them. (shrink)

The seventh chapter focuses on the aftermath of the decline of Cartesianism as a leading force in the Dutch academic context. After De Volder and De Raey, indeed, only Ruardus Andala in Franeker carried on the teaching of Cartesian physics (which he taught by commenting upon Descartes’s Principia) and metaphysics, mainly for the sake of contrasting Spinozism and other forms of radical Cartesianism. Thus, Descartes’s philosophy came a dead end on the eve of the eighteenth century. Yet, Leiden Cartesianism (...) and the Leiden experimental tradition (which could include, after De Volder and Senguerd, the activities of Herman Boerhaave), favoured the introduction of Newtonianism as the standard in teaching natural philosophy. This was carried out by ’s Gravesande, who used logic and metaphysics (including rational theology), that is, the chief foundational disciplines in the Cartesian tradition, to introduce students to and justify the assumptions (methodological and ontological) of a Newtonian approach in natural philosophy. This had two outcomes. On the one hand, his arguments in metaphysics (i.e. ontology) have the function of clarifying which objects natural philosophy can investigate. These are natural laws, whose ultimate source in substances or modes cannot be ascertained by intellect alone, as they depend on the power of God. On the other, given the fact that experience is our only means of grasping such laws (which are then mathematically handled) he provides a rational-theological justification of experiential evidence, as capable of providing us with a degree of certainty equal to mathematical evidence. As for the Cartesians, this is still the paradigm of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, with the introduction of Newtonianism foundational disciplines such as logic and metaphysics (including rational theology) served as a justification for and a reflection on a given scientific methodology. Thus, philosophy started to be actually detached from the natural sciences, and to assume a subservient role with respect to them, as once it was the ancilla theologiae. (shrink)

The recent reemergence of theories that emphasize the semantic and conceptual aspects of emotions has also brought to attention questions about their rationality. There are essentially two standard senses in which emotions can be assessed for their rationality. First, emotions can be said to be categorically rational insofar as they presuppose our psychological capacities to be clearly conscious of distinctions, to engage and manipulate concepts, and hence to provide intentional descriptions as reasons for what we feel and are moved (...) to do. For this "cognitive" rationality we can apply the usual standards intrinsic to the processes of belief formation such as coherence, consistency, inferential validity, and appropriateness of evidence. Secondly, and derivatively of "rationality" as a teleological or strategic notion, emotions can be thought of as rational or irrational depending upon their function in fulfilling certain specified human purposes. While neither adhering to nor dismissing what these two mainstream perspectives afford, the following thesis is an alternative, yet complementary, project. Its aim is to "rationalize" emotions through insights obtained in programmatic examinations of their relationship to a number of critical features of being human: intentionality, expression and language, sense of self, responsibility, self-deception, and value cognition and moral agency. The idea is less to fit emotions within some formulaic description of rationality and more to let its potential definition emerge subsequently to these investigations. This reflects a conviction that rationality is not a unitary property of our minds but a complex stance towards the world. It also exhibits an awareness that, as evidenced by current debates, "rationality" is very much a contested notion. (shrink)

As frequently pointed out in this discussion, one of the most characteristic features of Mayr's approach to the history of biology stems from the fact that he is dealing to a considerable degree with his own professional history. Furthermore, his main criterion for the selection of historical episodes is their relevance for modern biological theory. As W. F. Bynum and others have noted, the general impression of his reviewers is that “one of the towering figures of evolutionary biology has now (...) written a towering history of his discipline.”138 Bynum is here referring to The Growth of Biological Thought, but this observation holds equally true for Mayr's other historical writings: One must surely read this book [One Long Argument] not only for its content in itself, but for what it tells of its author. And certainly as one does so, one comes away full-handed. Many, if not all, of the disputes and controversies that have driven Mayr through his long intellectual life reappear, stated as forcefully and elegantly as ever.139Up to this point, most reviewers agree; the bone of contention is, rather, how to evaluate Mayr's historical work, considering this observation. The two related characteristics of his work-I will call them subjectivity and presentism-stand in opposition to a widespread approach in the history of science exemplified by Kuhn's suggestion that “insofar as possible..., the historian should set aside the science that he knows. His science should be learned from the textbooks and journals of the period he studies.”140 There are, however, historians who consider the close connection between Mayr and the subject matter of his historical studies to be an advantage.141On the other hand, it is assumed that the connection between past and present must result in a distortion of the historical truth and lead to a historiographical fallacy, commonly referred to as “Whig history”. Herbert Butterfield, who in 1931 gave the term its now generally accepted meaning, believed that “real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own”142. Unfortunately, Butterfield's definition of what he considers Whig history remains somewhat vague, and modern authors have emphasized what they consider most important. Butterfield's “subordination of the past to the present” is referred to in respect to the selection of subjects (there are more biographies of Charles Darwin than of, let's say, Louis Agassiz),143 to the evaluation of historical authors,144 or, more generally, to all kinds of histories “with one eye, so to speak, upon the present.”145 The underlying tendency of Whig historians is to produce a “historical account told from the viewpoint of those in power,”146 leading to a “glorification of the present.”147 It is obvious that Mayr's strongly presentist approach to the history of biology can be called Whiggish, if we apply the criteria of “selection” or “reference.” However, it might be worth mentioning that the program of writing a strictly historicist account of the history of science is challenged by various authors.148 For Mayr, it is not only legitimate but necessary to compare the present situation with the past. “Whiggish” is only the evaluation of an author in terms of our time.149I cannot discuss the Whit/anti-Whig controversy in any detail here, apart from saying that Mayr has defended himself rather extensively against the charges of being Whiggish.150 Nevertheless, it may be useful to touch on some of the criticisms that are predominant in reviews of his writings. First, we encounter the notion that historians can write a true and convincing historical account only if they have no personal interest or interpretation of their own; Mayr, on the other hand, because he “has such strong interpretations of his own, ... cannot possibly convince everyone that he is right about everything.”151 It makes one wonder, what historian has ever been able to convince everyone that he or she is right about everything? But apart from this peculiar idea, it unquestionably poses certain dangers if the subject matter of historical scrutiny and the author are identical. At the same time, this identity brings certain advantages with it, especially firsthand experiences of the period in discussion. Whether these personal memories ultimately result in a distorted picture of the past has to be decided in every particular instance. The notion that a scientific study can be conducted by a completely detached observer from a neutral standpoint has been shown to be impossible in physics, and it is also an illusion in historiography. The question is not whether, but which kind of interest are the underlying motivation for a historian. At this point, Mayr is ahead of his critics when he suggests that our understanding of the past always has a subjective component: The main reason, however, why histories are in constant need of revision is that at any given time they merely reflect the present state of understanding; they depend on how the author interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and on his own conceptual framework and background. Thus, by necessity the writing of history is subjective and ephemeral.152Second, the temporal proximity between the event and the historical analysis makes difficulties inevitable and will finally result in certain false assessments. But this applies to all historians when they discuss recent problems, regardless of whether they are personally involved or not: As long as the battle between Darwinism and Lamarckism was raging, it was quite impossible to undertake an unbiased evaluation of Lamarck. ...[The] definite refutation of Lamarck's theory of evolutionary causation clears the air. We can now study him without bias and emotion and give him the attention that this major figure in the history of biology clearly deserves.153Third, Mayr is primarily interested in biological problems and not, for instance, historiographical, sociological, or psychological questions. Several authors have remarked that since the beginning of the professionalization of the history of science in the 1960s, a rift between two groups has developed, resulting from the heterogeneous professional backgrounds and interests of the people involved: the authors who were originally biologists and became interested in the history of their discipline only later on, and the authors who were trained as historians.154 Whereas the first group, the “biologists,” tend to be laymen in history proper, the “historians” are in most cases laymen in biology. Different professional backgrounds obviously shape the historical perspective in both groups, but neither approach is necessarily superior. The great number of important books in the history of biology written by “biologist” documents how valuable this point of view can be. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the writings of biologists in the history of science tend to have a strong “internalist” tendency and often neglect the professional, cultural, and political context of science. Mayr's approach is that of a “biologist”; it is “internalist,” and typical for scientists who turn to the history of their discipline.I want to conclude my analysis with a quotation from a review by Douglas J. Futuyma, which gives a perceptive glimpse of Mayr's personality and style: One cannot help standing in awe of the germanic capacity for vast, allembracing synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust, or Wagner's integration of the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all of human history and experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all of biology, a Ring des Nibelungen complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of reductionism, the struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population thinking from the bounds of essentialism.155 Within this style of thinking Mayr has “to offer...nothing less than a vision of biology that places neodarwinian evolutionary theory firmly at the centre.”156 There may be other visions of biology, but few of them have as indefatigable and able representatives as Darwinism has in Ernst Mayr. (shrink)

The strong correlation between people’s socioeconomic position and health within high income countries is a well-documented fact. A person’s occupation, income and education level tell us a lot about that person’s prospects on a long and healthy life, such that we can speak of a ‘social gradient in health’, or a ‘socioeconomic health gap’. This association is often perceived to be unjust. Therefore, it is generally thought that governments should aim to reduce socioeconomic health inequalities. However, this idea needs ethical (...) justification, for it is not evident if and why exactly these inequalities are unjust. For instance, are inequalities in health unjust per se? Or because the underlying socioeconomic inequalities are unjust? And does justice require equal health levels, or a minimum level of health? What complicates the issue, is that the width of the health gap, or the steepness of the social gradient, depends on what health measures are used. Overall, the more subjective the measure, the greater the inequalities appear to be. But are all these measures equally morally relevant? This dissertation aims to give a better understanding of these philosophical questions. It does so by investigating the question of what we should understand by health in the first part, after which it addresses the question of how to evaluate socioeconomic health inequalities in the light of justice. The introduction begins with a description of the phenomenon of socioeconomic health inequalities, and how it has been addressed by politicians, epidemiologists and philosophers in the past and today. The chapter continues by formulating the central question of the dissertation – that of which health inequalities should be focused in the light of a concern with social justice. It explicates how this dissertation contributes to answering that question, by discussing the potential relation between the conceptualisation of health and justice evaluations, and by discussing which questions are addressed in each of the following chapters. The chapter 2 addresses the question of how health is conceptualised in the philosophical and public heath literature, and how theoretical concepts of health differ. It proposes to approach health concepts as a Wittgensteinian family of thick concepts and argues that while theories on health generally argue in favour of one specific concept, a comparison of concepts shows that we may need different concepts of health given the variety of health practices. By explicating the differences between five concepts of health, this chapter argues that each captures aspects of health that all seem relevant when we talk and think about health. Classifying these concepts based on their distinctions reveals them as members of a conceptual family: each of the discussed concepts differs from the others in at least one respect and resembles the others in several respects. Moreover, the discussion of the concepts shows that ‘health’ always both describes a condition and values that condition at the same time. Having both descriptive and evaluative dimensions, we can see health concepts as ‘thick concepts’. Given this evaluative dimension, it is important to reflect on the question of what understanding of health guides specific practices. Moreover, the distinctions revealed by the classification can serve as a conceptual toolbox for reflection on the assumptions and purposes of health practices. How such reflection could work is illustrated by a brief exploration of what health aspects are focused upon in three specific health practices. Chapter 3 presents a study into the question of how health is conceptualised by ordinary citizens and to what extent conceptualisations of health differ between socioeconomic groups. By making use of the method of concept mapping, this study analyses how different socioeconomic groups formulate their own answers regarding the question ‘what does health mean to you?’. It presents concept maps of health for three different socioeconomic groups living in the city of Utrecht that reveal that all groups have a multidimensional understanding of health. An interpretation of the concept maps reveals nuanced differences between groups. The multiple aspects of health were also ranked by importance. It appears that each group assigned most importance to mental health. All in all, the study shows that people in lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to show a conceptualisation of health that refers to 1) the absence of health threats, 2) a person within his/her circumstances, 3) the value of functional notions, and 4) an accepting attitude towards life. Chapter 4 addresses the question of what the theoretical and empirical study to concepts of health could imply for health equity practices. It does so by exploring further the suggestions made in chapters 2 and 3. Regarding the question of which health aspects should guide health equity policies, this chapter discusses the question of whether we should primarily look at subjective or objective health measures, and whether a universal or relative standard of health should be central. While justice-related concerns of impartiality and equal treatment may seem to favour an objective perspective and a universal health standard, it appears that we have good reason to account for the subjective perspective as well. It is also argued that a concern for recognition and participatory parity gives room for relative health standards. Th room for relative health standards confronts us with the question of how to deal with mechanisms like adaptive preferences that the concept maps reveal. It proposes a way out, by arguing for society-relative health standards. Chapter 5 examines the question of whether inequalities in health should be evaluated ‘directly’, thus independently of a distribution of their social determinants. It proposes a sufficientarian perspective, such that the central question of evaluation is that of whether everyone is – or can be – healthy enough. By discussing two sufficientarian approaches to health and social justice – by Powers & Faden and by Nussbaum – this chapter distinguishes two ways of setting a threshold level for health. Both approaches appear to provide an unsatisfactory basis for justice evaluations and lead us away from direct evaluation if we try to settle health minima that are less arbitrary. In anticipation to chapters 6 and 7, it is argued that the perspective of sufficient health for relational equality escapes this arbitrariness: compared to that of a decent human life, it better helps to answer both the question of what socioeconomic health inequalities a society is due to avoid, and the question of when socioeconomic health inequalities are unjust considering their consequences. Chapter 6 discusses to what extent Daniels’s theory of health justice provides a satisfactory answer to the question of what health inequalities a society is due to avoid. Daniels proposes an indirect evaluative approach by arguing that we should evaluate socioeconomic health inequalities in the light of Rawls’s principles of justice as fairness. That is, if socioeconomic inequalities are in accordance with fair equality of opportunity and with the difference principle, the corresponding health inequalities would be just. It is shown that the suggestion that Rawls’s principles regulate the social determinants of health neglects that not all social determinants of health belong to society’s basic structure as conceived of by Rawls and are thereby not subjected to the principles of justice. To acknowledge the social mechanisms leading to socioeconomic health inequalities in their full complexity, it is argued that we should broaden our understanding of society’s structure in accordance with Young’s notion of social structural processes. This renders the question of what health inequalities a society is due to avoid into a question of what we can expect from the side of the various actors that uphold the social structures that produce socioeconomic health inequalities. Lastly, it is discussed how a shift to Young’s theory completes the shift to non-ideal theorising that seem already initiated by Daniels, and that with this, the distinction between direct and indirect evaluation dissolves. Chapter 7 discusses to what extent equality in health is of instrumental value for a society of free and equals. It thus takes up the idea proposed in chapter 5, that an evaluation of the consequences of health inequalities is also due. Taking relational equality as an evaluative framework reveals three ways in which inequalities in life expectancy threaten this ideal. That is, via unequal risks to stigmatisation, unequal risks to unemployment and the risk of unequal pension enjoyments. It is thereby shown that these risks are especially great for those lower down the socioeconomic strata. It thus concludes that equality in health is of instrumental value to relational equality. The chapter continues to argue that our instrumental approach opens a new perspective: to mitigate the identified injustices by changing society, rather than by reducing inequalities in health. This is argued to be an advantage in the light of the realistic assumption that of the socioeconomic health inequalities will persist. The paper thus offers a complementary approach to both the evaluation and the mitigation of the injustice of socioeconomic inequalities in health. The discussion chapter summarises the central findings of the analyses of health concepts and discusses questions regarding the philosophical and practical merits of comparing theoretical health concepts, the need for developing new health measures or concepts and the importance or nonsense of studying citizen’s views on health. Repeating this for the dissertation’s second part, the central findings of the chapters on justice evaluation are summarised and followed by a discussion of questions and issues that have remained unaddressed so far. Here, central points of discussion are my take on rules of distribution, the distinction of direct and indirect evaluation, the role of ideal and non-ideal theory, the idea of relational equality, and personal responsibility for health. The chapter concludes by noting that also in the light of justice evaluations, all commonly used health measures are relevant for justice. Therefore, my recommendations for policy and further research entail that inequalities in each of these measures deserve attention by both policymakers and researchers. Specifically, policymakers and researchers should give attention to how exactly each of these health inequalities come about, in such a way that a discussion about the question of who can be assigned responsibility to alleviate them is well-informed; and both should give attention to the effects of health inequalities on the opportunities for people to live on equal standing, in such a way that when these opportunities are diminished, actions can be considered to aim to restore relational equality. (shrink)

This book offers a fresh look at Edmund Husserl’s philosophy as a nonfoundational approach to understanding the self as an embodied presence. Contrary to the conventional view of Husserl as carrying on the Cartesian tradition of seeking a trustworthy foundation for knowledge in the "pure" observations of a disembodied ego, James Mensch introduces us to the Husserl who, anticipating the later investigations of Merleau-Ponty, explored how the body functions to determine our self-presence, our freedom, and our sense of time. (...) The result is a concept of selfhood that allows us to see how consciousness’s arising from sensuous experiences follows from the temporal features of embodiment. From this understanding of what is crucial to Husserl’s phenomenology, the book draws the implications for language and ethics, comparing Husserl’s ideas with those of Derrida on language and with those of Heidegger and Levinas on responsibility. Paradoxically, it is these postmodernists who are shown to be extending the logic of foundationalism to its ultimate extreme, whereas Husserl can be seen as leading the way beyond modernity to a nonfoundational account of the self and its world. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider whether it makes sense to say that our cognitive capacities—remembering, imagining, intending, hoping, expecting and so on—manifest as inner, subpersonal processes. Given whether something makes sense is a grammatical rather than theoretical or empirical issue, it cannot be explained but can only be better understood by describing and reflecting on situations in which it arises. As such, I approach this issue using the descriptive method of O.K. Bouwsma, which is a development of Wittgenstein's latter (...) methodological approach of conceptually clarifying our bounds of sense. In the course of my investigation, I come to the realisation that cognitive capacities do not, as much psychology and cognitive science imply, make sense as inner, subpersonal processes. Instead, they make sense as personal capacities, which manifest in many ways of acting. (shrink)

This study investigated the reasons that leaders have given for their leader role occupancy. By using a mixed-method approach and large leader data, we aimed to provide a more nuanced picture of how leader positions are occupied in real life. We examined how individual leadership motivation may associate with other reasons for leader role occupancy. In addition, we aimed to integrate the different reasons behind leader role occupancy into the framework of sustainable leader careers and its two indicators: leader’s health (...) and performance. The survey data consisted of 1,031 leaders from various sectors of working life. Qualitative analysis revealed that leaders mention various factors behind their leader role occupancy, resulting 26 themes. After inductive investigation of the data, theory-driven analysis focused on the sustainable career components and agency vs. non-agency. Qualitative data was quantitized based on the theory-driven categories for statistical analysis. Based on the these analysis, we found out that only Affective-Identity MTL predicted all of the studied reasons behind leader role occupancy, whereas the other motivation types did not. All of the reasons for leader role occupancy except non-agentic ones were related to both leaders’ own and their followers’ occupational well-being. Leaders with more person-related and agentic reasons for leader role occupancy experienced better occupational well-being. Person- and context-related and agentic reasons behind leader role occupancy associated also with followers’ occupational well-being, but the associations differed from those of leaders’ well-being: person-related and agentic reasons associated with followers’ exhaustion, but this association was not found among leaders. Our study provided important information for practitioners in the field of human resources and development, as it has shown that if the reasons for leader role occupancy mainly reflect circumstances or other non-person-related reasons, the experienced occupational well-being and person-career fit may remain weak. It is necessary to try to support the leadership motivation for those leaders, or to shape the job description in such a way that it can also offer the experiences of meaningfulness from aspects other than self-realization through a managerial role. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum. Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul by Robert VinkesteijnJulien DevinantVINKESTEIJN, Robert. Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum. Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul. Leiden: Brill, 2022. viii + 357 pp. Cloth, $155.00Vinkesteijn's book, stemming from his 2020 dissertation at Utrecht University, explores Galen's views on (human) nature and the soul. (...) Opting to sidestep the debate on the unity of Galen's thought, he offers a series of close readings of some of Galen's most philosophical writings, radiating from the short treatise The Capacities of the Soul Follow the Mixtures of the Body (QAM), which encapsulates the questions he investigates throughout the book. Although many of the texts and themes examined have been extensively discussed in previous scholarship, its strength lies in its steadfast and coherent defense of a long-favored interpretation of Galen as "somatizing the soul."Case Study 1 revisits QAM, which has sparked considerable debate in Galenic studies. It defends the idea, recently criticized, that despite Galen's agnostic statements about the substance of the soul elsewhere, he supports here the physicalist and more speculative thesis that the whole soul is indeed identical to the specific mixture of elemental qualities in the homoeomerous parts of the main psychic organs. Vinkesteijn maintains that this thesis aligns with Galen's general physiology, and that Galen's analysis of the soul as a formal aspect in a hylomorphic whole represents not an exegetical stance on Aristotelian positions but his own viewpoint, applicable to both the nonrational and rational parts. The study then rightly emphasizes Galen's conviction that our actions and affections can and should be modified by habituation. It argues that there is no basis for assuming that the identity thesis leads to a radically deterministic ethic. Indeed, it showcases the possibility of a second formation of our bodily mixture, with Galen attributing to the rational part of the soul a godlike potential for change and improvement of the soul's virtues—although it concedes the unlikelihood of such personal enhancement, as it hinges on rare natural predispositions.Case Study 2 focuses on Galen's definition of nature and his elemental theory; it focuses on the first book of Galen's Commentary on Hippocrates's On the Nature of Man (HNH) and examines the notable absence of the soul as an explanatory factor in an account of human nature. It argues that Galen articulates a concept of nature as a primary hylomorphic substance, shared by all beings subject to generation and decay and determining their secondary properties. The study then [End Page 557] examines Galen's use of his allegedly Hippocratic/Platonic method of division to dissect nature into its constantly interacting elemental powers of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying. Vinkesteijn then underscores the complexities in delineating mixtures from nature as an intelligent creator, challenging the dichotomy between a transcendent and an immanent formation of natural beings and pinpointing the difficulty in differentiating between the causality of nature and that of the soul in humans.Case Study 3 explores Galen's engagement with Plato's Timaeus, focusing on the soul–body relationship. It drives home the argument of the first study and aims to show how the fragments of Galen's lost Commentary on the Timaeus offer a somatizing interpretation of the soul. Extensively drawing on the disputed but recently reassessed Larrain fragments, it convincingly argues that they align with passages from Galen's attested works. Vinkesteijn highlights Galen's creative reading of the Timaeus, tailored to mirror his own doctrines. Beyond incorporating Aristotelian notions into his analysis, Galen is depicted as ingeniously reinterpreting the Platonic soul–body distinction. Notably, Vinkesteijn shows how Galen takes the river metaphor literally, as an indication of moisture abundance, and applies it beyond its original context of generation. This approach enables Galen to reinterpret Plato's ideas through the prism of elemental qualities and emphasize the association of the soul with lightlike or dry and hot substances, bridging the gap between the Platonic concept of the soul and Galen's physiological understanding of human nature.Case... (shrink)

Authored with Melissa Burchard. The two authors have shared for nearly twelve years a dialogue regarding maternal matters, and ambivalence is at the heart of many of them. What we have come to believe is that maternal ambivalence is heavily shaped by socio-cultural factors lying outside/beyond a mother’s will. This leads us to challenge recent discussions in philosophy which characterize ambivalence in terms of unresolved conflict among one’s desires and thus a problem of will, or as insufficient coherence in (...) one’s identity. Drawing from our personal experiences of maternal ambivalence, colored as they are by our socio-cultural backgrounds, we argue that socio-cultural factors shape not only the experience of maternal ambivalence but the very phenomenon. We approach this issue through a feminist project of actively shared knowledge construction, privileging personal and conversational narrative as a ground for theorizing. After framing the issues, we offer a set of dialogues between us that explicitly reflect the issues of ambivalence we have pursued over the years. This enables us to demonstrate the profoundly situated nature of our understanding of maternal ambivalence as it emerges through the stories and conversations we relate, on questions ranging from whether to have children or not and which children to have (adopting), to how being a (good) mother differs for Indian and American women who are also philosophers. We believe this is important methodologically as well as for its content, as dialogical construction of knowledge is appropriate for feminist investigations as much as dialectical process is for philosophical ones. Further, the interplay of our quite different perspectives offers unique insights, as we engage in both comparative and constructive analyses at the same time. -/- The most significant implication of our discussion is that maternal ambivalence cannot be adequately theorized or responded to without direct attention to situatedness because of the many features of both mothering and ambivalence that are affected by particularities. So, for example, we argue that in some cultural discourses of mothering, admitting ambivalence is a betrayal of cultural/maternal values, whereas other cultures have at least some room for expressing ambivalence without serious censure. Ultimately, we conclude that although maternal ambivalence itself is often seen as an indicator of failure or wrongness in mothering, it is more reasonable to see it as an ordinary response to a complex, layered and demanding experience, and an indicator of the difficulties of mothers’ situations and depths of self-reflection. (shrink)

A. N. Prior’s writings should obviously be studied already for historical reasons. His inventions of modern temporal logic and hybrid logic are clearly important events in the history of logic. But the enduring importance of studying his works also rests on his methodological approach, which remains highly relevant also for systematical reasons. In this paper we argue that Prior’s formulation in the 1950s of a tense-logical paradigm for the study of time should be understood in the light of at least (...) three other principles or perspectives which were manifest already in his studies during the 1940s and further developed in the 1950s: his emphasis on the value of interdisciplinary studies, his reflections on formalisation and his view of the role of symbolic logic in conceptual studies and in the philosophy of science. Our investigation into Prior’s basic tenets and principles makes extensive use of Prior’s Nachlass. It is thereby also exemplified how his correspondence and unpublished papers contain important information for a deeper understanding of Prior’s paradigm for the study of time. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer was one of the seminal works of political philosophy in recent decades. It was also the beginning of a series of interconnected investigations of staggering ambition and scope, investigating the deepest foundations of Western politics and thought. The Use of Bodies represents the ninth and final volume in this twenty-year undertaking, breaking considerable new ground while clarifying the stakes and implications of the project as a whole. It comprises three major sections. The first uses Aristotle's discussion (...) of slavery as a starting point for radically rethinking notions of selfhood; the second calls for a complete reworking of Western ontology; and the third explores the enigmatic concept of "form-of-life," which is in many ways the motivating force behind the entire Homo Sacer project. Interwoven between these major sections are shorter reflections on individual thinkers, while the epilogue pushes toward a new approach to political life that breaks with the destructive deadlocks of Western thought. The Use of Bodies represents a true masterwork by one of our greatest living philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME'S THEORY OF IMAGINATION* Historians of philosophy seem increasingly to agree with the view that David Hume is the greatest philosopher ever to have written in English. This high esteem of the Scottish empiricist, however, is a phenomenon of the last decades. As late as 1925 Charles W. Hendel could write "that Hume is no longer a living figure." And Stuart Hampshire reports that in the Oxford of the (...) Thirties the results of Humean philosophizing were regarded as "extravagances of 2 scepticism which no one could seriously accept." A cursory glance at the Hume bibliography edited by Roland Hall demonstrates that it has become standard practice in the English-speaking world to seek an understanding of Hume's arguments when analysing philosophical problems. Critical literature nevertheless continues to neglect the majority of his arguments. It is sufficient, I think, to mention Hume's remarks on space and time, his theory of emotions, his inquiries into the problem of justice, his economic writings and those on the psychology of roliqion. Dut 3 even in the frequently quoted passages of the Treatise Hume's central notion is not, in my opinion, at the heart of the analysis. Here I refer to Hume's remarks on the phenomenon of imagination (fancy). Although he mentions this curious faculty of our cognition on almost every page, there are only a few sporadic attempts at an interpretation of this "supreme Humean faculty." This may be due to the fact that until quite recently the 'problem of imagination' has hardly even belonged to the marginal topics of modern philosophy. This paper therefore attempts to demonstrate not only that Hume dealt with the phenomenon of imagination, but also that an analysis of this concept is of paramount significance for the understanding of his entire philosophy. In the first three sections three different faculties or functions of the imagination will be distinguished. Not only the artist's - 91 92. works, but also the insights of the scientist and the illusions of metaphysicians are, according to Hume, decisively based on this very cognitive faculty. Section 4 contains a brief discussion of the sceptical arguments of the Treatise, particularly of the Humean analysis of causation. Their impact on Hume's reflections on the problem of imagination is the topic of Section 5. I hope to prove that in the Enquiry Hume interprets these sceptical arguments differently than in the Treatise. While in his early work he feels himself exposed to Pyrrhonian doubts, he assumes the position of an 'academic sceptic' in the Enquiry. The concluding section eventually tries to determine which motives may have been decisive for Hume's change of opinion. I shall defend the thesis that in his late work Hume developed an 'ethics of belief on the basis of natural beliefs, in which the artistic capacity of the imagination assumes a decisive role in justifying philosophical and scientific propositions. 1. The Metaphysical Faculty of the Imagination In the Introduction to the Treatise Hume describes his endeavour as developing a propaedeutic basic science which should provide a better understanding of all products of the human mind (science, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, politics). In the Abstract he calls his early work "a system of the sciences" (?7). Besides this empirical interest Hume saw the importance of justifying the choice of method, i.e. to extoll the experimental procedure as the only rational one. Metaphysical approaches are interpreted as products of a blind imagination. Beginning with the Introduction to the Treatise it has been a constant motive of Hume's philosophy to constrain metaphysics in order to make way for science. In the sections Of the effects of other relations and other habite (T106-117), Of unphilosophiaal probability 93. (T143-155), Of scepticism with regard to the senses (T187218 ), Of the antient philosophy (T219-225) Hume specifies those beliefs which, in his opinion, are based on figments of our imagination. He "had ^en that all the errors of philosophy arose from the fact that imagination determined men much more than they recognized - there could be no secure truth for him, then, until he had explored this aspect of the nature of man." He compares imagination to a ship which, having... (shrink)

The socio-ethical concerns regarding exploitation in commercial surrogacy are premised on asymmetric vulnerability and the commercialization of women’s reproductive capacity to suit individualistic motives. In examining the exploitation argument, this article reviews the social contract theory that describes an individual as an ‘economic man’ with moral and/or political motivations to satisfy individual desires. This study considers the critique by feminists, who argue that patriarchal and medical control prevails in the surrogacy contracts. It also explores the exploitative dynamics amongst actors in (...) the light of Baier’s conceptualization of trust and human relationship, within which both justice and exploitation thrive, and Foucault’s concept of bio-power. Drawing on these concepts, this paper aims to investigate the manifestations of exploitation in commercial surrogacy in the context of trust, power and experiences of actors, using a case study of one clinic in India. The actors’ experiences are evaluated at different stages of the surrogacy process: recruitment, medical procedures, living in the surrogate home, bonding with the child and amongst actors, financial dealings, relinquishment and post-relinquishment. (shrink)

Recent neuro-psychoanalytic literature has emphasized the view that our subjective identity rests on ancient subcortical neuro-psychic processes expressing unthinking forms of experience, which are “affectively intense without being known” (Solms and Panksepp, 2012). Devoid of internal representations, the emotional states of our “core-Self” (Panksepp, 1998b) are entirely “projected” towards the external world and tend to be discharged through instinctual action-patterns. However, due to the close connections between the subcortical and the cortical midline brain, the emotional drives may also find a (...) way to be reflected within an intrinsic self-referential processing, evident when the organism is not actively engaged with the external world. Thanks to such endogenous functioning, the core-Self emotional dispositions are not overtly executed, but they are organized within coherent dynamic mental structures, called “feeling-toned complexes” by C.G. Jung and “unconscious phantasies” by Melanie Klein. The intrinsic self-referential dynamism of the ‘brainmind’ originated from REM sleep arousal and then evolved in the resting-state activity of a complex of cortico-limbic midline brain structures (CMS), also called Default Mode Network (DMN). From our neuro-ethological perspective, it is sustained by an “introverted” SEEKING activity leading to the subjective exploration of internally constructed virtual scenarios. This “mind wandering” function, implicated in dreaming, fantasy processing, remembering and thinking, is the essence of the imaginative function and constitutes the first form of reflection, where intentions and drives gain a primordial form of conscious (but not self-conscious) representation. During postnatal development, this original (“archetypal”) imaginative function is slowly attuned in a relational “transitional” space and may be expressed first in non-verbal and eventually in abstract-verbal social communicative patterns. Our view has noticeable implications for psychotherapy. Instead of trying to directly modify interpersonal, extrinsic relationships (a top-down approach), dysfunctional emotional-relational patterns may be modified by a process in which the patient is helped to let-go of the perceived feeling-objects in favor of an immersion, via the actual feeling, from the superficial level of perception towards a void feeling-state, empty of images. Only starting from this “anoetic” feeling-state, the deep imaginal creative and re-structuring self-referential activity may be reactivated by a process of spontaneous imagination. (shrink)

Much thought is being given nowadays to the ways in which society might continue to substantiate the principle of solidarity in the economic sphere. Predictable cost increases in the social security system stand at the root of a number of problems that have arisen. While those concerned look for solutions, a discussion is emerging concerning the communal scope of solidarity. People are not only asking themselves how they are to remain in solidarity, but also with whom they should share the (...) means at their disposal. The concomitant question ‘with whom?’ is not always as evident as it might seem, since the ethical scope of solidarity appears, in principle at least, to be unlimited.De facto, however, the limits of solidarity tend to coincide with those of the political community. The ongoing unification of Europe should broaden matters in this regard, but whether this process will also broaden our perspective on world-wide solidarity remains to be seen. At the same time, certain groups are calling for a stricter delimitation of our solidarity. The elections in Europe during the past ten years have made it clear that a number of emotional factors play a role in this context, factors which are not infrequently expressed in the slogan ‘our own first’.The intention of this article is to confront, with the Christian principle of solidarity, certain spontaneous and emotional motivating forces which call for a limitation of our solidarity. Solidarity implies both a feeling and a rational decision. In line with any other emotion, the feeling of solidarity is rooted in motivating factors of which we are not always consciously aware. Such factors are rarely thematised in an explicit fashion, partly because they are as such difficult to discuss and partly because they are difficult to make operational at the ‘scientific’ level. As a rule, our attention tends to be focused on the ethical desirability and practical-economical achievabilty of solidarity.Ours is a talkative age. Never before have people talked so much. The telephone, radio, cinema, television, audio and video recording have all increased our opportunities for speaking to one another not only when we are together but across distance and across time as well. This has been the century of chatter .Chattering carries in itself the risk of superficiality. Before we realise it, we are talking without thinking deeply. Messengers of doom, such as Postman and Finkielkraut , warn the western world against the dangers of the television and video culture which they contend constitute a threat to western democracy. As we grow accustomed to the high speed and fleeting character of the ‘new media’, we tend to gradually lose our capacity to think things over and reflect. Ultimately, its cursory and uncritical approach to things becomes the norm.For those who consider television as the summit of idle chatter, reading is not merely a relief but a threatened activity which needs all our support. If we consider thoughtfulness and consideration to be virtues, then the unhurriedness associated with reading must be seen as a virtuous quality. More than at any other time in our history, being literate is of great importance in our industrialised societies. Hence, there is a growing awareness of the need to link critical thinking with literacy skills. More than ever before, we need the writings of others – distant in history, geography and profession – to understand our complex world. Such writings provide information, recommend actions and promote political and philosophical orientations.Discourse analysis proves that the complexity of the discourse is higher in written than in spoken language. Written language integrates more idea units in a clause, making use of nominalisation, embedded constituents, etc. Gaining access to such thorough knowledge is a first step in the long process of asserting control. Being literate creates the opportunity for increasing access to knowledge not generally available in the direct experience of life. Being able to read enables the individual to transcend time and space and to liberate his or her own mind and spirit. It removes the individual from dependence on immediate senses, direct contacts, commonplace talk.All these elements are important in the shaping of one’s personality. Confrontation with challenging, original and even provocative ideas forces the individual to make up his or her own mind. Democracy needs this kind of individualism. (shrink)

In our dealings with animals at least most of us see them as conscious beings. On the other hand the employment of human categories to animals seems to be problematic. Reflecting on the details of human beliefs, for example, casts serious doubt on whether the cat is able to believe anything at all. These theses try to reflect on methodological issues when investigating animal minds. Developing a theory of animal mentality seems to be a test case of the interdisciplinary research (...) programme in cognitive science. From the philosopher`s perspective the most pressing problem is how to talk about animal minds. Can we just employ the vocabulary of human psychology? If not, exploring animal minds contains the non-trivial task of introducing a terminology that allows to see the distinctness of animal minds and to see its connection to the human case. The treatment of some topic in cognitive science has to reach a reflective equilibrium between our intuitions, a phenomenological approach, philosophical conceptual analysis, various empirical approaches and model building. Reflective equilibrium means in this context that we have to reach a coherent model which incorporates as much of our intuitions concerning animal consciousness and integrates at the same time the findings of the different co-operating sciences. There can be various trade-offs in case of conflict between, say, philosophical definitions of mental terms as to be applied to animals, neurophysiology, our reflected intuitions and ethological model building based on a computational theory of animal minds. The paper gives an example of reflective equilibrium in discussing the case for awareness in vertebrates. It considers the role of evolutionary reasoning. The main focus lays on two examples of comparing our human notions with corresponding abilities in animals, and how an appropriate conceptual apparatus dealing with the abilities of animals could be introduced. (shrink)

Over the last few years, there has been a surge of work in a new field called “moral psychology”, which uses experimental methods to test the psychological processes underlying human moral activity. In this paper, I shall follow this line of approach with the aim of working out a model of how people form value judgements and how they are motivated to act morally. I call this model an “affective picture”: ‘picture’ because it remains strictly at the descriptive level and (...) ‘affective’ because it has an important role for affects and emotions. This affective picture is grounded on a number of plausible and empirically supported hypotheses. The main idea is that we should distinguish between various kinds of value judgements by focusing on the sort of state of mind people find themselves in while uttering a judgement. “Reasoned judgements” are products of rational considerations and are based on preliminary acceptance of norms and values. On the contrary, “basic value judgements” are affective, primitive and non-reflective ways of assessing the world. As we shall see, this analysis has some consequences for the traditional internalism-externalism debate in philosophy; it highlights the fact that motivation is primarily linked to “basic value judgements” and that the judgements we openly defend might not have a particular effect on our actions, unless we are inclined to have an emotional attitude that conforms to them. (shrink)

I aim to provide a satisfying response to radical scepticism, a view according to which our knowledge of the external world is impossible. In the first chapter I investigate into the nature and the source of scepticism. Radical scepticism is motivated both by the closureRK-based and the underdeterminationRK-based sceptical arguments. Because these two sceptical arguments are logically independent, any satisfying anti-sceptical proposal must take both of them into consideration. Also, scepticism is a paradox, albeit a spurious one, so we need (...) to provide a diagnosis as to why we are lead into the paradox and why the alleged paradox misrepresents our epistemic standings. Hence, I advocate an obstacle-dissolving strategy for combating the sceptical problem. In chapter two, I discuss the anti-sceptical import of transcendental arguments. Although ambitious transcendental arguments are vulnerable to Stroud’s dilemma, I argue that modest transcendental arguments are promising. Modest transcendental arguments start from an undoubted psychological fact and then reveal some necessary theoretical commitments that we must make. Regarding these commitments, I submit that we are type II epistemically justified in believing them. Our commitments are type II justified in the sense that making these commitments can promote our epistemic goals, namely, the attainment of true beliefs and the avoidance of false beliefs. After that, in light of Cassam’s objection to transcendental arguments, I contend that a modest transcendental argument should be used as a stepping stone for a diagnostic anti-sceptical proposal. In chapter three, I develop a Davidsonian response to closureRK-based radical scepticism. This form of sceptical argument rests on the idea that there is no limitation on our acquisition of rationally grounded knowledge. I discuss Davidson’s theory of radical interpretation, the principle of charity and triangulation. Crucially, he argues that the content of a knowledge-apt everyday belief is determined by its typical cause and other relevant beliefs. Further, among different propositional attitudes, belief is prior to doubt. What follows is that doubt must be local because it must presume other content-determining beliefs. Also, I explore Davidson’s view on the concept of belief. On his view, in order to have a knowledge-apt belief, we must have the concept of knowledge-apt belief. We can command this concept by having the concept of objective truth. Objective truth requires that we are aware of and are capable of appreciating the possibility of a belief’s being true or false. And this possibility cannot be appreciated unless we have some related contentful beliefs to identify the content of the very belief. However, we are committed to, as opposed to believing, the proposition that the sceptical hypothesis does not obtain. It is impossible to appreciate the possibility of our fundamental commitments being false from our own perspective, because fundamental commitments specify the general cause of our beliefs. A change in this regard would cause a total change of the content of all beliefs, which leaves us no contentful belief at all to make this possibility intelligible. Therefore, the closureRK principle is not applicable to the evaluation of the sceptical hypothesis. Hence, we can retain the closureRK principle while evading the closureRK-based sceptical challenge. Unfortunately, the Davidsonian response cannot deal with the underdeterminationRK-based sceptical challenge, because we are not shown whether our rational support in the good case favours one’s everyday belief over its sceptical counterpart. In chapter four, I examine how epistemological disjunctivism can deal with underdeterminationRK-based radical scepticism. This form of sceptical argument assumes that our rational support provides at best inconclusive support for our beliefs. Therefore, a belief’s being rationally supported, no matter in the good case or in the bad case, is compatible with the belief’s being false. Epistemological disjunctivism claims that in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge, our rational support can be both factive and reflectively accessible. The factive rational support at issue is one’s propositional seeing. I discuss both McDowell’s and Pritchard’s proposals for motivating factive seeing, and I argue for epistemological disjunctivism against three prime facie objections, i.e., the distinguishability problem, the basis problem and the access problem. When epistemological disjunctivism is shown to be a plausible view, I argue that underdeterminationRK-based radical scepticism can be dismissed. In particular, in the optimal case, factive rational support favours our everyday belief over the sceptical hypothesis. However, regarding closureRK-based radical scepticism, epistemological disjunctivism seems to licence a robust answer. The ambitious answer is that, in the good case, we can after all know the denial of the sceptical hypothesis in virtue of possessing factive rational support. And it is the immodesty of this answer that renders this response unpalatable. In the last chapter, I propose a combined treatment of the sceptical problem. Although both the Davidsonian response and the epistemological disjunctivist response can only deal with one aspect of the sceptical problem, their views are in fact mutually supportive. On the one hand, the Davidsonian response, together with a Wittgensteinian insight, shows that why rational support can only be provided in a local manner; on the other hand, epistemological disjunctivism reminds us that rational support can be factive in the good case. Putting these two points together allows us to answer the whole sceptical challenge in a uniform way. This combined proposal has three claims. First, our rational support can be both local and factive, so we can dismiss both sceptical arguments in one go. Second, the sceptical problem is a spurious paradox, so the combined treatment involves a diagnosis. This diagnosis starts from a modest transcendental argument which reveals some necessary commitments that we must make, and then proceeds to expose faulty assumptions in the sceptical paradox. Third, once the dubious assumptions are dislodged, we can evade the sceptical problem once and for all. In the end, we are offered with a satisfying response to radical scepticism. (shrink)

Augustine’s insights into the will and its free decision have long been a focus of controversy since his lifetime. Nonetheless, in modern scholarship, little effort has been made to clarify the actual function of the will as a psychological force in the life of mind. It has often been taken for granted that the will is an independent faculty which underlies our moral responsibility by its free choice. Accordingly, much ink has been spilled over issues such as necessity and freedom, (...) grace and free will, sin and evil will etc. This philosophical inquiry distinguishes itself from its antecedents by adopting a psychological focus on the function of the will. It attempts to explicate why uoluntas, and not other psychological activities, is the locus of moral responsibility in Augustine’s philosophical psychology. The work is thus split into two parts, each consisting of four chapters: the first part devoted to the will’s operation as a psychological dynamism, and the second to the traditional consideration of the will as a moral faculty. In the first part, the dissertation systematically investigates the psychological phenomenon of the will in its relationship to other psychological activities, from irrational affection to intellectual cognition. This phenomenological approach starts with Augustine’s unusual conception of concupiscentia carnis in his debates with Julian of Eclanum. According to Augustine’s philosophical interpretation of this biblical term, concupiscentia carnis as an uncontrollable tendency defines the essential infirmity of the will and forms the starting-point of further affective expressions of the soul. Then, the analysis advances to the role of the will in the formation of affection. It reveals the implicit approval that is entailed in the unvoluntary pre-volitional movements of the soul. This explains the superficial discrepancy between Augustine’s accounts of affection as can be found in Books IX and XIV of De ciuitate Dei. This general account of Augustine’s theory of emotion is followed by an in-depth examination of the feeling of shame so as to display the will’s actual contribution in a reflective affection. Augustine convincingly proves that shame reflects the powerlessness of the will in confrontation with concupiscentia carnis as well as the will’s effort to regain its dignity. To complete the foray into Augustine’s philosophy of the soul, his reflections on intellect and will in the process of moral decision are called into question. By reconsidering Augustine’s account of his own conversion and his reflections on our journey to the happy life, my analyses show that neither intellectualitic nor voluntaristic interpretations do justice to his understanding of moral decision. The voluntaristic interpretation overlooks the intellectual perspective of happy life and Augustine’s emphasis on the necessity of a knowledge of the good for our moral behaviour. On the other hand, the intellectualistic account unjustly ignores Augustine’s insights into the severe destructiveness of the failure of the will and the dilemma of two wills at war. To summarize, the phenomenological approach in Part I reveals the omnipresent feature of the will in mental life. The implications of this psychological feature of the will are twofold. It indicates the independence of the will as well as the limitations of the will by its actual conditions. The second part of this work investigates the moral significance of Augustine’s psychological insights into the function of the will. What bridges the gap between uoluntas as a psychological power and uoluntas as a moral faculty is Augustine’s most controversial conception of freedom. The dissertation first scrutinizes Augustine’s arguments for the independence of the will as reconstructed and assumed in the first part. By metaphysical arguments, Augustine reveals that nothing external, neither inferior nor superior being, can force the will to attain a particular disposition. For this cannot happen in a world governed by the divine order. In his analyses of the phenomenon of two contradictory wills, Augustine shows that the will is conditioned but not compelled by other internal forces. However, this merely represents the negative aspect of the will’s freedom, or libertas a coactione. At the same time, the positive aspect of Augustinian uoluntas has frequently been misinterpreted as a faculty of choice, or libertas indifferentiae. A careful reading shows that the free decision of the will is essentially a capacity to pursue one’s own happiness. In accord with this eudemonistic emphasis, the genuine freedom is the freedom to will and to accomplish the good, which alone guarantees the happy life. This original interpretation of freedom offers powerful support to Augustine’s account of moral agency. One is not only held responsible for his voluntary evildoings which he could have avoided, but also for the necessary conditions of life, i.e., ignorantia and difficultas as effects of original sin. For as argued earlier, even the presence of concupiscentia carnis as the inherent infirmity of the will contains the least assent of the will. This assent establishes the moral agency in evil willing. To account for our agency in the good will, the dissertation addresses the problem of compatibility between divine grace and freedom of will. My analysis shows that Augustine’s rigid position in the last years of his life is also philosophically defensible. An internal function of the grace upon the faculty of the will will not destroy its freedom to attain its own disposition. This philosophical analysis concludes by highlightling the close affiliation between the will and the self in Augustinian uoluntas. “I know nothing I could call my own if the will by which I’m willing or unwilling is not my own.”. By consent or dissent of the will, we identify ourselves with mental images, affective movements, practical reasoning and other psychological activities, either implicitly or explicitly. Augustine’s realistic conceptions of the will and its conditioned freedom provide a subtle and rich picture of human nature, which is still relevant to our own theoretical reflections on the self. 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Epistemology aims to understand the concept of knowledge. To understand what knowledge is it is necessary to understand what justified belief is. This is not because justified belief is necessary for knowledge in every case; I consider cases of knowledge without justified belief later. But in most cases of knowledge, justified belief is necessary for knowledge. The concept or concepts of justification focus the interest of epistemologists. The other components of knowledge, which include at least true belief, are investigated in (...) general metaphysics and in philosophy of mind. Further, our only approach to truth in our beliefs is through justified believing. These considerations underscore the peculiarity of some recent developments in epistemology. Reflection on Gettier examples, examples of social factors influencing knowledge, and examples of discriminative capacities influencing knowledge have led some epistemologists to turn away from concepts of justification and toward concepts of reliability, discrimination among relevant alternatives, and optimal explanation. [...] I shall offer an account of knowledge, the multi-perspectival account, in which most any traditional concept of justification can be employed, but which relates justification to knowledge in a more illuminating way than a typical justified, true belief approach does... (shrink)

Each of us is a measure. The project of advocates of change in Plato’s Theaetetus as compared with sophistic thought -/- Summary -/- One of the most intriguing motives in Plato’s Theaetetus is its historical-based division of philosophy, which revolves around the concepts of rest (represented by Parmenides and his disciples) and change (represented by Protagoras, Homer, Empedocles, and Epicharmus). This unique approach gives an opportunity to reconstruct the views of marginalized trend of early Greek philosophy - so called „the (...) sophistic movement”. Paradoxically, previous research shows little interest in sophistic thought as a source of the standpoint of advocates of change („the secret doctrine”). The roots of „the secret doctrine” were investigated in the works of Heraclitus, Aristippus, and Antisthenes or those related to “neoheracliteanism”. However, researchers did not make any significant attempt to confront this concept with the contemporary research on the sophistic movement. The conviction that sophistry was primarily humanistically oriented was one of the main reasons why researches were opposed to the fact that „the secret doctrine” could represent a true expression of Protagoras’ views. This is why J. Burnet and F. M. Cornford in their seminal works assumed that “the secret doctrine” should be attributed to Plato, who simply combined a series of loose statements into one single project. In this work, we argue that the thesis which questions the parallels between the sophists’ interests and the philosophers of nature requires a significant revision. There is ample evidence to suggest that the philosophy of nature was a part of sophists’ research. This is supported by two main arguments. First, the tutors of sophists were philosophers of nature. Second, there are numerous sources that explicitly show sophists’ interest in the physical issues. These sources include anecdotal evidence about the fact that sophists wrote works On nature. There is also information confirming that they deliberated on detailed physical issues. The analogies between the concepts attributed to the advocates of change and our knowledge about sophists from other sources is very wide and contains most elements, which are included in the project of “changeable reality” presented in Theaetetus. The deliberations on the mechanism of perception, which are close to those of flux theory of perception in Theaetetus, are present in the sources referring to Gorgias of Leontinoi, the famous sophist and rhetorician. Also, the second element of “the secret doctrine” that is the metaphysics of flux matches up with what we know about the sophists’ views from other sources. On this basis, one can deduce that – contrary to the tradition which marginalized the role of sophistic considerations on the issue of being and non-being – it was one of the major subjects of sophistic research. Its main point was the criticism of the Eleatic conception of a single and unchangeable being, which also plays a key role in the doctrine of flux in Theaetetus. The epistemological theses which are presented in Theaetetus are borne out in sophistic sources. They include the definition of knowledge as perception, the „Man-measure” formula and a number of principles, which result from these foundational theses. Sophists’ empirical preferences resonate with the theses of the advocates of change in Theaetetus. Special attention that is given to the issues of differences among people, and even to cognitive differences in one person depending on the changeable states to which a person is subject, goes well together with what we know about reciprocal influence between the sophistry and medicine. The consequences of the epistemological conception present in Theaetetus have their equivalents in sophists’ works and other testimonies. An example of these consequences may be the abolition of truth and falsehood or the abolition of contradiction, which finds its expression in the thesis ouk estin antilegein. The analogies also concern reflections on the language itself. The project of the “new language” uses categories, which were developed by sophists. These include the antithesis of nomos and physis. The general intentions of this project reflect Protagoras’ ideas, at least to the extent to which they are known from the sources reporting his thoughts on language. Plato’s Theaetetus can thus be considered a veritable treasury of sophistic motifs. Even though the problem remains unsolved and one is still not able to unambiguously decide about the author of “the secret doctrine”, one can come to a certain conclusion – even if Plato synthesized various doctrines, he must have relied in his project mostly on the elements that he borrowed from sophists. Moreover, the value of reconstructing the project of the advocates of change in Theaetetus does not consist of mere enumeration of sophistic motifs. The dialogue is key to understanding the sophistic movement, whose separate doctrines – for the lack of sources and as a result of centuries-old disregard – are usually treated as rhetorical formulae that are interpreted in many ways and have no philosophical foundations. If it is really the case that the theses attributed to Protagoras in Theaetetus were actually a part or a derivative of Protagoras’ thought, or – speaking more conservatively – if they constitute a synthesis of sophistic thought done by Plato, they could represent philosophical foundations for the most important sophistic theses: the “Man-measure” formula, the ouk estin antilegein principle, the concept of language as a tool, the idea of the relativity of good and the whole practical sphere of sophists’ activity. Contrary to the views of many researchers, we are certain that the representatives of the sophistic movement did not limit themselves only to the application of practical rules, which determined the extent of their educational or rhetorical-political activity. They were capable of creating – indeed, they did create comprehensive projects that embraced the whole thematic scope subject to philosophical reflection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionStuart J. Youngner (bio), Laura A. Siminoff (bio), and Renie Schapiro (bio)This issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ) centers on a piece of empirical research. The motivation behind the study of Laura Siminoff, Christopher Burant, and Stuart Youngner (2004) was to find out more about what the general public understands and believes about when a person is dead. More specifically, the study tried to determine how (...) members of the public define death, especially their acceptance and interpretation of the medical concept of "brain death," and their attitudes toward the so-called "dead donor rule," an informal but powerful social and legal norm insisting that the taking of organs for transplantation not cause the death of the source of those organs.As the demand for organs increases and the waiting list grows, the United States has explored multiple ways to expand the pool of potential donors. One approach has been to gerrymander (coherently or not) the line between life and death to shift patients who are extremely compromised but traditionally considered to be in the living category into the dead category. In this way, the dead donor rule remains technically intact. This reasoning is explicit in the report of the Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee (1968) that "introduced" "brain death" to the American culture. Since then, other efforts to redraw the line have been proposed and rejected.One alternative to gerrymandering is to consider under what conditions, if any, it is morally acceptable to violate the dead donor rule. Some would argue that this alternative is the more "honest" approach. Rather than sidestepping moral problems by calling people dead, it brings the moral problems to the surface where the necessity of sticking to the rule can be considered on its own merits. However, when the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a position paper that proposed making anencepahlic newborns an exception to the dead donor rule, along with arguments about why this was acceptable, the outcry was so great that the proposal was retracted (AMA 1995).Clearly, our society has identified organ transplantation as a priority, although two papers in this volume (those by Courtney Campbell and by Megan Crowley-Matoka and Robert Arnold) take issue with that prioritization. The fact that the donor pool has remained relatively stable (and inadequate) despite massive efforts [End Page 211] to increase it speaks, at least in part, to the cultural and legal resistance to "new" ways to procure more organs. Voluntarism seems to have peaked. Financial incentives clash with the heavily endorsed notion of the "gift of life" and seem to many to violate the dignity of the human body. Presumed consent or eminent domain, in which the community has a greater claim to a person's organs than that person or his/her family, go against the grain of American individual freedom and the ethos of patient autonomy.Abandoning the dead donor rule generally is regarded as an even tougher sell to the American public and its legislators. The study by Siminoff and colleagues attempts, among other things, to gauge just how tough this sell would be. What the data actually demonstrate is a matter of interpretation, and this issue of the KIEJ is devoted to some of those interpretations. The authors, with the exception of Daniel Hausman, came together for a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, during which the study's methods and data were presented with time for questions, clarifications, and general discussion. The authors then worked with the editors to generate the papers printed in this volume.The issue begins with a presentation of the study conducted by Siminoff and colleagues. The same paper also appears in the journal Social Science and Medicine, where it includes the conclusions of the authors (Siminoff, Burant, and Youngner 2004). In the current volume, we present only the methodology of and data from the study, allowing a number of distinguished commentators to offer their own conclusions and reflections.The first response comes from Tracy Schmidt, Executive Director of Intermountain Donor Services, one of our nation's organ procurement organizations (OPOs). For years, organ procurement professionals have reported anecdotal stories about families who wished to donate organs of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 (2002) 406-408 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Henry E. Allison. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 424. Cloth, $69.95. Paper, $24.95. In his new book, Henry Allison provides a study of the two introductions (...) and the first half of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment to stand alongside his previous books on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (1983) and Kant's Theory of Freedom (1990). Those books showed Allison's commitment to the unity and coherence of Kant's thought, and it is the aim of the present book to demonstrate the connections between the two halves of Kant's third Critique, that is, Kant's aesthetics and his teleology, as well as to demonstrate the connections between Kant's aesthetic theory and both his theoretical and his practical philosophy. In order to defend the unity of the third Critique, Allison defends Kant's characterization of the judgment of taste as a species of reflective judgment, and argues that our judgments of beauty depend upon the principle of the purposiveness of nature that is also the basis for judgments about the systematicity of natural laws. To display the connections between Kant's aesthetics and his theoretical philosophy, [End Page 406] Allison uses the first Critique's distinction between the quid facti and the quid juris to explicate the relation between Kant's "analytic of the beautiful" and his "deduction of pure aesthetic judgment"; he then defends the success of Kant's strategy for the deduction of judgments of taste by grounding them in the general conditions of the possibility of cognition. Finally, in order to explain Kant's connection between aesthetics and morality, Allison interprets Kant's theory of the "intellectual interest" in the beautiful as evidence of nature's amenability to our achievement of the ends of morality, an assurance that we need not be motivated in the first place to act as morality requires, but rather to prevent our motivation to be moral from being undermined by our own predisposition to radical evil. He then defends Kant's thesis that all beauty, and thus natural as well as artistic beauty, can be seen as an expression of aesthetic ideas, and specifically of the morally requisite idea of nature's amenability to the achievement of our moral objectives.There is much in this approach with which I can agree, and some with which I cannot. I agree that there is much in Kant's general conception of reflective judgment that illuminates his conception of judgments of beauty, yet I do not think that the principle of taste is analogous to the principle of the purposiveness of nature, because it does not play a role in making particular judgments of taste analogous to the role the latter principle plays in the conduct of scientific inquiry. My own interpretation of Kant's model for making particular judgments of taste is not fundamentally different from that which Allison offers under the rubric of the quid facti, although we disagree about which of the four "moments" of the "Analytic of the Beautiful" are part of the meaning of a judgment of beauty and which function more as grounds for making judgments with such a meaning. But I am not persuaded by Allison's defense of Kant's deduction of pure judgments of taste, that is, his answer to the quid juris, from the objections that I and others have raised to it. Finally, although there are large areas of agreement between our interpretations of Kant's theory of intellectual interest in the beautiful, the claim that aesthetic experience is evidence of nature's amenability to the realization of the ends that we adopt in the name of morality is only part of the story that Kant develops in the Critique of Aesthetic... (shrink)

The dissertation under comment is a contribution to the area of Set Theory concerned with the interactions between the method of Forcing and the so-called Large Cardinal axioms.The dissertation is divided into two thematic blocks. In Block I we analyze the large-cardinal hierarchy between the first supercompact cardinal and Vopěnka’s Principle. In turn, Block II is devoted to the investigation of some problems arising from Singular Cardinal Combinatorics.We commence Part I by investigating the Identity Crisis phenomenon in the region (...) comprised between the first supercompact cardinal and Vopěnka’s Principle. As a result, we generalize Magidor’s classical theorems [2] to this higher region of the large-cardinal hierarchy. Also, our analysis allows to settle all the questions that were left open in [1]. Finally, we conclude Part I by presenting a general theory of preservation of $C^{}$ -extendible cardinals under class forcing iterations. From this analysis we derive several applications. For instance, our arguments are used to show that an extendible cardinal is consistent with “ $^{\mathrm {HOD}}<\lambda ^+$, for every regular cardinal $\lambda $.” In particular, if Woodin’s HOD Conjecture holds, and therefore it is provable in ZFC + “There exists an extendible cardinal” that above the first extendible cardinal every singular cardinal $\lambda $ is singular in HOD and $^{\textrm {{HOD}}}=\lambda ^+$, there may still be no agreement at all between V and HOD about successors of regular cardinals.In Part II and Part III we analyse the relationship between the Singular Cardinal Hypothesis with other relevant combinatorial principles at the level of successors of singular cardinals. Two of these are the Tree Property and the Reflection of Stationary sets, which are central in Infinite Combinatorics.Specifically, Part II is devoted to prove the consistency of the Tree Property at both $\kappa ^+$ and $\kappa ^{++}$, whenever $\kappa $ is a strong limit singular cardinal witnessing an arbitrary failure of the SCH. This generalizes the main result of [3] in two senses: it allows arbitrary cofinalities for $\kappa $ and arbitrary failures for the SCH.In the last part of the dissertation we introduce the notion of $\Sigma $ -Prikry forcing. This new concept allows an abstract and uniform approach to the theory of Prikry-type forcings and encompasses several classical examples of Prikry-type forcing notions, such as the classical Prikry forcing, the Gitik-Sharon poset, or the Extender Based Prikry forcing, among many others.Our motivation in this part of the dissertation is to prove an iteration theorem at the level of the successor of a singular cardinal. Specifically, we aim for a theorem asserting that every $\kappa ^{++}$ -length iteration with support of size $\leq \kappa $ has the $\kappa ^{++}$ -cc, provided the iterates belong to a relevant class of $\kappa ^{++}$ -cc forcings. While there are a myriad of works on this vein for regular cardinals, this contrasts with the dearth of investigations in the parallel context of singular cardinals. Our main contribution is the proof that such a result is available whenever the class of forcings under consideration is the family of $\Sigma $ -Prikry forcings. Finally, and as an application, we prove that it is consistent—modulo large cardinals—the existence of a strong limit cardinal $\kappa $ with countable cofinality such that $\mathrm {SCH}_\kappa $ fails and every finite family of stationary subsets of $\kappa ^+$ reflects simultaneously. (shrink)

Scientific models are important, if not the sole, units of science. This thesis addresses the following question: in virtue of what do scientific models represent their target systems? In Part i I motivate the question, and lay out some important desiderata that any successful answer must meet. This provides a novel conceptual framework in which to think about the question of scientific representation. I then argue against Callender and Cohen’s attempt to diffuse the question. In Part ii I investigate the (...) ideas that scientific models are ‘similar’, or structurally morphic, to their target systems. I argue that these approaches are misguided, and that at best these relationships concern the accuracy of a pre-existing representational relationship. I also pay particular attention to the sense in which target systems can be appropriately taken to exhibit a ‘structure’, and van Fraassen’s recent argument concerning the pragmatic equivalence between representing phenomena and data. My next target is the idea that models should not be seen as objects in their own right, but rather what look like descriptions of them are actually direct descriptions of target systems, albeit not ones that should be understood literally. I argue that these approaches fail to do justice to the practice of scientific modelling. Finally I turn to the idea that how models represent is grounded, in some sense, in their inferential capacity. I compare this approach to anti-representationalism in the philosophy of language and argue that analogous issues arise in the context of scientific representation. Part iii contains my positive proposal. I provide an account of scientific representation based on Goodman and Elgin’s notion of representation-as. The result is a highly conventional account which is the appropriate level of generality to capture all of its instances, whilst remaining informative about the notion. I illustrate it with reference to the Phillips-Newlyn machine, models of proteins, and the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey systems. These examples demonstrate how the account must be understood, and how it sheds light on our understanding of how models are used. I finally demonstrate how the account meets the desiderata laid out at the beginning of the thesis, and outline its implications for further questions from the philosophy of science; not limited to issues surrounding the applicability of mathematics, idealisation, and what it takes for a model to be ‘true’. (shrink)

This article challenges a prominent claim in moral philosophy: that autonomy is a personal ideal, according to which individuals are authors of their own lives. This claim is philosophically dubious and ethically pernicious, having excluded women from positions of rational authority. A reading of Ibsen's A Doll's House illustrates how this conception of the ideal of autonomy misrepresents the reality of individuals' lived experiences and imposes a gendered identity which subordinates women to a masculine narcissism. In Ibsen's play the (...) woman, as a doll confined to home, remains dependent on an autonomous man. It would seem that men in modern philosophy could see only their own image as rational agents reflected in their ethics; but, in fact, this position is self-defeating. The recognition of our contingencies and so, vulnerability, motivated Kant himself to try to make the moral realm secure with something necessarily common to all human beings: our capacity to reason. The unwitting upshot of Kant's ethics has been the restriction of reason to a purely formal function; but this autonomy of reason undermines itself in being unable to guide the writing of the rational agent's own life. I propose instead to preserve the capacities of moral rationality, while urging the incorporation of ethical practices previously devalued by their association with vulnerability, such as attention, affection and relationality. My philosophical challenge is, first, to develop an internal critique of ethics which exposes its authoritative imposition of a gender identity and, next, to propose a revised conception of autonomy, namely, not just writing our own story, but reading the stories in which we find ourselves. (shrink)