In this paper I argue that equal respect-based accounts of the normative basis of tolerance are self-defeating, insofar as they are unable to specify the limits of tolerance in a way that is consistent with their own commitment to the equal treatment of all conceptions of the good. I show how this argument is a variant of the long-standing ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection to Kantian-inspired, freedom-based accounts of the justification of systems of norms. I criticize Thomas Scanlon’s defence of (...) ‘pure tolerance’, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti’s work on the relationship between tolerance, equal respect and recognition, and Arthur Ripstein’s recent response to the ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection. The upshot of my argument is that, while valuing tolerance for its own sake may be an appealing ideal, it is not a feasible way of grounding a system of norms. I close with a thumbnail sketch of two alternative, instrumental (i.e. non-Kantian) approaches to the normative foundations of tolerance. (shrink)

Do the new sciences of well-being provide knowledge that respects the nature of well-being? This book written from the perspective of philosophy of science articulates how this field can speak to well-being proper and can do so in a way that respects the demands of objectivity and measurement.

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Thick concepts, namely those concepts that describe and evaluate simultaneously, present a challenge to science. Since science does not have a monopoly on value judgments, what is responsible research involving such concepts? Using measurement of wellbeing as an example, we first present the options open to researchers wishing to study phenomena denoted by such concepts. We argue that while it is possible to treat these concepts as technical terms, or to make the relevant value judgment in-house, the responsible thing to (...) do, especially in the context of public policy, is to make this value judgment through a legitimate political process that includes all the stakeholders of this research. We then develop a participatory model of measurement based on the ideal of co-production. To show that this model is feasible and realistic, we illustrate it with a case study of co-production of a concept of thriving conducted by the authors in collaboration with a UK anti-poverty charity Turn2us. (shrink)

Can social phenomena be understood by analyzing their parts? Contemporary economic theory often assumes that they can. The methodology of constructing models which trace the behavior of perfectly rational agents in idealized environments rests on the premise that such models, while restricted, help us isolate tendencies, that is, the stable separate effects of economic causes that can be used to explain and predict economic phenomena. In this paper, I question both the claim that models in economics supply claims about tendencies (...) and also the view that economics, when successful, necessarily follows this method. When economics licenses successful policy interventions, as it did in the case of the Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions, its method is not to study tendencies but rather to study the phenomenon as a whole. Key Words: economic models • tendencies • economic experiments • policy making • John Stuart Mill. (shrink)

Different arguments in favor of the moral relevance of the concept of biodiversity (e.g., in terms of its intrinsic or instrumental value) face a range of serious difficulties, despite that biodiversity constitutes a central tenet of many environmentalist practices and beliefs. That discrepancy is considerable for the debate on potential moral reasons for protecting biodiversity. This paper adds a new angle by focusing on the potential of the concept of natural otherness—specifically individual and process otherness in nature—for providing additional moral (...) reasons in favor of the protection of biodiversity as variety. Four arguments are presented. Two arguments draw on the individual natural otherness of nonhuman living beings and two additional arguments draw on the process otherness of active nature. The upshot is that each of these arguments—if successful—provides a moral reason in favor of the protection of biodiversity. (shrink)

In Valuing Health, Dan Hausman argues that well-being is not measurable, at least not in the way that science and policy would require. His argument depends on a demanding conception of well-being and on a pessimistic verdict upon the existing measures of subjective well-being. Neither of these reasons, I argue, warrant as much skepticism as Hausman professes.

What makes a measure of well-being valid? The dominant approach today, construct validation, uses psychometrics to ensure that questionnaires behave in accordance with background knowledge. Our first claim is interpretive—construct validation obeys a coherentist logic that seeks to balance diverse sources of evidence about the construct in question. Our second claim is critical—while in theory this logic is defensible, in practice it does not secure valid measures. We argue that the practice of construct validation in well-being research is theory avoidant, (...) favoring a narrow focus on statistical tests while largely ignoring relevant philosophical considerations. (shrink)

Abstract‘Little by Little’. Data Collection and Scales in Nineteenth‐Century Legal Anthropology. With the growing possibilities to measure and accumulate data, two strategies for a small discipline like the history of science are suggested: (1) It should facilitate and maintain the cooperation of specialists who pursue different subject matters and methods. (2) It should invite the recent history of quantification as an essential perspective. A large data collection on the anthropology of law by the German colonial office serves as example.

Semantics of natural language; includes some Australian language examples.

THE WEST AFRICAN NOTION OF THE "PALAVER," AS DESCRIBED BY CONgolese theologian Bénézet Bujo, is an excellent resource for postconflict reconciliation. The palaver creates physical, social, and psychological space for open communication so that persons can be integrated into the life and expectations of their communities. Through the palaver African communities heal sickness, educate their members about moral standards, and reconcile enemies. Three palaver-based commitments intersect with goals of postconflict reconciliation: a commitment to open communication, especially truth-telling; a commitment to (...) memory or developing a shared sense of the past; and a commitment to reconciliation at the communal level. Given the violent conflict still roiling parts of Africa today, it is critical to make explicit those African traditions that can encourage postconflict reconciliation and promote a just peace. (shrink)

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

Habilitation thesis, book proposal in preparation.

Pushing past the constraints of postmodernism which cast "reason" and"religion" in opposition, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, seizes the opportunity to question the authority of "the modern" and open the limits of possible experience, including the call to religious experience, as a new millennium approaches. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, engages with Jean-Luc Marion and other religious philosophers to entertain questions about intention, givenness, and possibility which reveal the extent to which deconstruction is structured like religion. New interpretations of (...) Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida emerge from essays and discussions with distinguished philosophers and theologians from the United States and Europe. The result is that God, the Gift, and Postmodernism elaborates a radical phenomenology that stretches the limits of its possibility and explores areas where philosophy and religion have become increasingly and surprisingly convergent. Contributors include: John D. Caputo, John Dominic Crossan, Jacques Derrida, Robert Dodaro, Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion, Frangoise Meltzer, Michael J. Scanlon, Mark C. Taylor, David Tracy, Merold Westphal and Edith Wyschogrod. (shrink)

Partiendo de datos proporcionados por la historia de la medicina en España, quisiéramos mostrar que M. Foucault tenía razón cuando afirmaba que uno de los puntos neurálgicos, a partir de los cuales irradian los poderes de normalización en nuestra sociedad, es el de los discursos y las prácticas médicas. Concretamente, hemos centrado nuestro análisis en algunos de los textos más representativos del higienismo y la medicina social durante el siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, para mostrar la enorme influencia (...) que ejercieron dichos discursos y prácticas de la medicina sobre los cambios en el estilo de vida de las clases populares que se produjeron durante este período. Sin duda, la medicina —sus discursos, sus instituciones, sus prácticas, sus recetas, sus recomendaciones— ha desempeñado un papel protagonista en el diseño de los procesos de subjetivación a través de los cuales nos reconocemos y nos construimos como sujetos dotados de un determinado tipo de identidad. (shrink)

The development of computer sciences has transformed the way of thinking and our perception of the world. To express this new view of the world, a new language is created, which uses such notions as “virtuality”, “virtual world”, “virtual reality”. These words have already worked in our colloquial speech and our thinking. However, they are used in various contexts and have a different meaning. The paper offers some remarks on the problem of the meaning of these notions and draws some (...) consequences of their interpretation. (shrink)

Experts by Experience in the context of mental health are those who have personal experience of using, or caring for someone who uses, mental health and social care services. How do people with lived experience of mental illness contribute to scientific knowledge and personal growth? This volume comprises three distinct philosophical perspectives focused on specific theoretical and practical challenges for theorizing expertise by experience in philosophical mental health research: the idea of subjectivity in 'lived experience' and the issue of scientific (...) validation, the prospects of shared meaning-making and the problem of injustice in 'co-production', and the philosophical role of values in navigating difference and value disagreement in psychiatry. (shrink)

This article considers understandings of nonviolence within the Catholic Worker movement and their embodiment. The aim is to make the Worker's position theologically understandable, demonstrating how this drives their methods for action. The article argues that a particular ethic of nonviolence can be found within the movement, grounded within the aims of its founders and the current practices of the movement today, drawing on the example of the Jubilee Ploughshares 2000 from which the London Catholic Worker was founded to illustrate (...) this. By exploring the movement's theological foundations for the practice of grassroots, active nonviolence, it will seek to present an important example of Catholic nonviolent practice questioning how this may challenge contemporary Catholic thinking on war and peace. (shrink)

This article is a mutual introduction of the science of well-being to philosophy of science and an explanation of how the two disciplines can benefit each other. In the process, I argue that the science of well-being is not helpfully viewed as a social or a natural, but rather as a mixed, science. Hence, its methodology will have to attend to its specific features. I discuss two of its methodological problems: justifying the role of values, and validating measures. I suggest (...) that tackling them calls for developing mid-level rather than high theories of well-being. (shrink)

Languages differ systematically in how they map path and manner of motion onto lexical and grammatical structures (Talmy, 1985). Manner languages (e.g., English, German and Russian) typically code manner in the verb (cf. English skip, run, hop, jog), and path in a variety of other devices such as particles (out), adpositions (into the room), verb affixes, etc. Path languages (e.g., Modern Greek, Romance, Turkish, Japanese and Hebrew) typically code path in the verb (cf. Greek vjeno ‘exit’, beno ‘enter’, ftano ‘reach’, (...) aneveno ‘ascend’, diashizo ‘cross’), and manner in adverbials (trexontas ‘running’, me ta podia ‘on foot’, jrigora ‘quickly’). The distinction is not meant to imply that the relevant languages lack certain kids of verb altogether. For instance, English has path verbs, such as enter, exit, ascend and descend, and Greek has manner verbs, such as treho ‘run’, kilao.. (shrink)

In July 2016, we participated in a conference in Lesvos (Greece) on borders, migration, and the refugee crisis. The Crossing Borders conference was framed in contrast with the ad-hoc humanitarianism that was being implemented, to the extent that it seemed to offer an opportunity to think about the refugee crisis, militarism, and austerity capitalism in systemic terms. This paper is based on an intervention we staged in the closing panel of the Crossing Borders conference, where we read a statement we (...) collectively wrote with fourteen other participants. The intervention was the outcome of frustration as we saw stereotypes and dynamics of knowledge production that reproduced the division between "us" and "them," further marginalising migrants and refugees, elevating international experts while silencing locally affected people. We use this incident and the text of this intervention as a starting point to analyse the growing academic industry in relation to what has been constructed as "Europe's refugee crisis." Our intervention sought to contest several kinds of borders—linguistic, epistemic, activist, methodological, political, historical, and internalised— which are uncritically reproduced in this academic industry. (shrink)