Essays by Jurgen Habermas on truth, objectivity, normativity, naturalism, and realism after the linguistic turn.

This collection breaks new ground in four key areas of feminist social thought: the sex/gender debates; challenges to liberalism/equality; feminist ethics; and feminist perspectives on global ethics and politics in the 21st century. Altogether, the essays provide an innovative look at feminist philosophy while making substantive contributions to current debates in gender theory, ethics, and political thought.

This would have been a better book if Sampson had argued his main point, the usefulness of the Simonian principle as an explanation of the evolution, structure, and acquisition of language, on its own merits, instead of making it subsidiary to his attack on ‘limited-minders’ (e.g., Noam Chomsky). The energy he has spent on the attack he might then have been willing and able to employ in developing his argument at reasonable length and detail. He might then have found that (...) argument faulty, or even wrong. Underdeveloped as it is, however, his point about the Simonian principle does seem to have thepossibility of some significance in understanding the empirical issues of this book (and the dichotomy of ‘limited’ and ‘creative’ minds is certainly not one of these).What Sampson has done inMaking Sense has the appearance of science, and theoretical linguistics, and therefore it is somewhat puzzling to find the conclusions that the human mind cannot be scientifically studied (p. 10), and that theoretical linguistics is a “mirage” (p. 210). His statement that It may still seem worthwhile to some to work out the exact implications for present-day linguistic structure of the fact that languages are evolved systems, but I cannot see that there is much glamour or, indeed, much substance in this task (p. 210) would surely be surprising to a geneticist or ethologist. We hope his apparent misunderstanding on this point will not lead him to give up his profession, in which he seems willing and able to make a significant contribution.What in particular is required is a clear indication of how the Simonian principle imposes itself in the ontogenesis of language. Consider Chomsky's example of the rule for forming questions in English. For sentence (1) below, children able to deal with such examples would give (2) but not (3) as the corresponding question (Chomsky, 1975, p. 31).The man who is tall is in the room.Is the man who is tall in the room?*Is the man who tall is in the room?Now compare Sampson's evolutionary explanation for the structure-dependence of rules which is illustrated in (1)-(3): “once a behavior-pattern has become thoroughly established, it will tend to be treated as a fixed given when used as a constituent of a more complex, later-learned behavior-pattern” (p. 183). In order for this to account for Chomsky's example it would have to be the case that children learn relative clauses before they learn questions, which simply isn't true.In conclusion, we wish not to seem unaware of the problems with the position Sampson is attacking, or unaware of the sometimes dogmatic way it too has been presented. Chomsky's hypothesis of innate linguistic ideas seems, fundamentally, to derive from the claimed rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face of limited and degenerate data. Chomsky appears to have been unwilling to argue these points directly or to show their relation to others, for which he has argued, for example, the implausibility of some abstract constraint's having been learned (cf. 1971, pp. 22–44; 1975, pp. 30–33; 1980, pp. 35–52). And almost from his first invoking of rationalism in support of his linguistic method, Chomsky has himself resorted to an unnecessarily polemical attack on empiricism (cf. 1965, p. 58, n. 33). The innateness issue is just not clear or simple enough to justify so much animus, or even conviction. (shrink)

Background Citizen science and models for public participation in health research share normative ideals of participation, inclusion, and public and patient engagement. Academic researchers collaborate in research with members of the public involved in an issue, maximizing all involved assets, competencies, and knowledge. In citizen science new ethical issues arise, such as who decides, who participates, who is excluded, what it means to share power equally, or whose knowledge counts. This article aims to present an ethics framework that offers a (...) lens of understanding and heuristic guidelines to deal with ethical issues in citizen science. -/- Methods We conducted seven case studies between 2015 and 2021 to attune and validate the ethics framework for the context of citizen science. The cases related to studies with older adults, people with a psychiatric vulnerability, people dependent on community care, people who are unemployed or living in poverty or both, and young adults with respiratory disease. -/- Results Ethics in citizen science reaches beyond the ethical issues in traditional biomedical and health research. It entails more than following procedures about informed consent and privacy and submitting a proposal to a Medical Research Ethics Committee. Ethics in citizen science relates to everyday ethical issues during the study, including relational and moral complexities concerning collaboration, sharing power, and democratic decision-making. Dealing with these issues requires ethics work of researchers. This entails seeing ethically salient issues and reflecting on everyday ethical issues. Ethics work consists of seven features: framing work, role work, emotion work, identity work, reason work, relationship work, and performance work. All are relevant for researchers in citizen science. -/- Conclusions Ethical issues in citizen science often relate to power differentials, partnership, and collaboration between academics and non-academics. The ethics framework prepares researchers for the work needed in citizen science to act responsibly and offers a heuristic guide to reflect on ethics. Reflection on ethics is a pathway towards ethical citizen science, especially if researchers collaboratively reflect in partnership with non-academics who are subject to the moral issue. (shrink)

This paper critically examines some of the challenges that white educators who interrogate whiteness with white students encounter. Two specific dilemmas are addressed: Is one supporting white students’ learning when one tries to teach from the place “where the student is” and/or is one colluding with whiteness by appeasing white discomfort and protecting white fragility, one’s students as well as one’s own? Does one interpret what white students say as a query to be responded to or as a white distancing (...) strategy that requires disruption? Each pedagogical challenge is described and debates around these issues are explored. Emphasis is given to the effects on students of color when white educators fail to respond appropriately. Implications for white progressive educators are drawn out. Two recommendations are discussed: Being willing to rock the boat and cultivating white double consciousness. (shrink)

The image of wine has a “spiritual sense”, which helps the faithful to understand the principles of their belief. Its mystery is connected with the theme of “sober inebriation”, developed by Philo of Alexandria and Origen, and culminating in Ambrose. The good wines that the bride enjoys before the groom’s arrival are a symbol of the good doctrines of the OT, whose teachings are however inferior to the revelation of the incarnate Christ. Good, sweet wine, meanwhile, refers to the doctrines (...) of the NT interpreted spiritually, the logos that helps us begin to know Christ, to bind ourselves to him in ecclesial unity and to love our neighbour. It also leads us to the “winepress”, i.e. renouncing superfluous land, becoming “full of must” and inebriated, so that we can dedicate ourselves to contemplation. The vine has a Christological value and catechetical function, dating back to John 15.1, which is often quoted with Saint Paul. The place where the vine is born and develops is the soul; the Logos supports its flowering in those who, by their free will, choose to flourish. The cluster of grapes refers to Christ, or to the victory of the righteous; the many grapes that he contains are believers. The vineyard is a symbol of the church formed by the pagans, of the commandments of God, or of the good things that God gave to man, who did not preserve them, having been stripped of them by the devil. The guardians of the vineyard are angels or priests. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical analysis and a new edition of an anonymous Epitome of John Dumbleton’s solution to the semantic paradoxes. The first part of this paper briefly presents Dumbleton’s cassationist solution to the semantic paradoxes, which the English philosopher proposes in his Summa Logicae, written in the 1330s–40s. The second part investigates the solution to various types of insolubles proposed by the anonymous author of the Epitome. The third part provides a new critical edition of the Latin text (...) – a first edition was edited by Bottin in 1978 – and an English translation. (shrink)

Confusion surrounds Catholic teaching on the use of assisted nutrition and hydration, specifically the question of when, if ever, its refusal or removal is ethical. This paper focuses on two often-neglected considerations: the relationship between means and mechanism, and an assessment of proportionality of the mechanism from the patient’s perspective. The authors draw on two critical principles of Catholic moral teaching: only ordinary means are required, and proportionality is subject to the perspective of the patient, not just that of experts (...) or the culture. The mechanisms that provide food and water have distinct benefits and burdens. Their proportionality is properly subject to analysis by the patient or surrogate, who determines which mechanism is acceptable in the patient’s situation. (shrink)

Swindal seeks to incorporate temporality into the formal-pragmatic analysis of discourse by developing what he calls ‘event-determining’ reflection. After outlining his motivations for introducing this new form of reflection, I offer a critique, first, of his appeal to meta-discourse about when to engage in discourse and, second, of the function of truth in his account. Finally, I suggest that Swindal’s theory of reflective acceptability fruitfully complements Robert Brandom’s normative pragmatics.

In his “Integrity: Justice in Work Clothes,” Postema assumes the task of showing that integrity is a genuine moral value of political communities, distinct from other values such as justice and fairness. Postema’s conception of integrity borrows much from Dworkin’s, but also differs from it in an important respect. As anyone familiar with Dworkin’s theory would expect, Postema’s idea of integrity is a kind of fidelity in laws (“practical directives”) and policies to principles arising from what Dworkin famously called “past (...) political decisions of the community.” It is fidelity to a conception of justice that fits and unifies these past decisions (and present ones), a conception the community can be viewed as forming. Postema’s innovation is to see integrity as “complex,” incorporating both “respect” for the past and also “regret.” Because of regret, any set of principles fitting the past will have some compromised coherence – indeed, some incoherence. Regret is consistent with preserving some currency for a morally incorrect decision, but limiting its force. The ultimate justification for viewing integrity as a virtue of law, Postema argues, is that it serves justice and fidelity, which he conceives of as other, more fundamental, values – provided, that is, that the principles express a “morally meaningful” conception of justice. Integrity thus understood allegedly binds officials to precedents in common law legal systems. So if Postema can succeed in his argument that integrity is a genuine moral value, he will have provided a moral justification for following precedent, even when the precedent is mistaken. Moreover, it will be a new kind of justification, an “internal justification” – one that provides a good reason for what Postema assumes is the rule of a precedent case. Success in his argument would be an important contribution to legal theory above and beyond the justification of precedent. Success would show that an interpretive conception of the nature of law also provides moral legitimacy to the resulting laws so conceived. Along with a stout defense of an interpretive theory of law – in particular, an integrity theory of law -- which Postema does not attempt, success would be the key to defending the widespread intuition that legal claims are not just formally normative, or normative in some special legal sense, but robustly – and so, morally – normative. Reasons for complying with law, properly understood, and for applying and enforcing it would be shown to transcend the realm of the merely prudential and the contingent. The conclusion of deep engagement with the details of Postema’s rich and intricate argument, unfortunately, reveals that it fails in its objective. Postema does not succeed in establishing that integrity is a distinct moral value of political communities. Moreover, the setting in which it is plausible that past principles morally justify following precedent is so special and (to some extent) ideal that Postema cannot be credited with offering a new justification for following precedent in actual common law systems, in the real world of the common law. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between Italian teachers’ well-being, socio-demographic characteristics and professional background. Using data from the 2015 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) we considered information collected by the questionnaire completed by a total of 6,491 teachers in the sampled schools. Moving from existing literature on teachers’ well-being, we investigate several aspects related to the teachers’ working environment, career motivation and investment, and job satisfaction. We assess the variability in the observed outcomes attributable (...) to school factors and heterogeneity between disciplines. Measurement models are combined in a multilevel setting in order to define teachers’ well-being on a broad perspective while accounting for the multiple sources of heterogeneity due to several factors (e.g., discipline, teacher professional background, and individual differences) occurring at different levels of the data structure. In general, results show that the teachers’ positive perception of the working environment in terms of availability of adequate human and physical resources, and professional development opportunities, provide a substantial state of well-being at work, and are related to teachers’ job satisfaction. Moreover, results highlight the key role of transformational leadership in defining a teacher’s well-being. Findings and implications are discussed. (shrink)

Is it possible to find an ethical and generative way to speak about the ‘work’ of Indigenous art? Regardless of what prohibitions exist to protect sacred knowledge from the gaze of Western eyes, Indigenous work is circulating; it is being read, misread, interpreted, misinterpreted and otherwise known. How can a non-Indigenous person ‘speak’ about Indigenous art without reducing it to the diagram, collapsing it into Western modes of knowing, or intruding into the domain of restricted cultural information? Given the lessons (...) of the Indigenous cultural practices, I propose that the work of art is performative and not merely representational. Through attention to the operation of rhythm in Kathleen Petyarre’s paintings, I propose to reconfigure contemporary understandings of performativity. In this formulation I will argue that in the dynamic productivity of the performative act, the world intrudes into practice, and in a double movement, practice casts its effects back towards the world. In this way I suggest that just as life gets into images, so imaging also produces reality. This mutual reflection is the work of art. (shrink)

I think that the international movement of doing philosophy with children consists of two main lines: the first line aims at elementary and seconday school philosophy and the second line aims at philosophy as an after-school enrichment. I'm mainly engaged in doing philosophy with children outside school.

This paper compares Tocqueville's concept of democracy to the social and political evolution of Brazil. It draws attention to the different points of departure which marked the establishment of American and Brazilian societies, through the works of authors such as Laura de Mello e Souza, Gilberto Freyre, Florestan Fernandes, Celso Furtado, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. It notes that, despite conditions being more favourable for the formation of a democratic society in the United States than in Brazil, subsequent to the (...) founding periods a certain coming together occurred in the process of formation of the two societies. The 'similarity of differences' between American and Brazilian societies becomes clear as soon as one brings together the roles played by the three constituent ethnic groups of these societies, which, by their simple existence, link difference to inequality. (shrink)

We are within nature and culture, conditioned simultaneously by genes and meanings. This form of our self-understanding is the result of fundamental modifications that happened in modern philosophical anthropology and of the impact of the natural Science. In modern philosophy three types of approaches to the human situation were constituted at different times: the idealist, the naturalist, and the culturalist, and the problem of whether humanity is natural (biological) or cultural has begun to take precedence over the issue of human (...) supernatural roots. Both approaches are presented, their presuppositions discussed, and arguments in favor of a version of the culturalist approach. Only the culturalist approach allows us to understand our own self-constitution and, in particular, our self-reflectivity, as well as the naturalist attempts to ignore them and immerse ourselves in nature. (shrink)

First, I love Greek language, a language which allow me to perceive what a language is, and what translation could mean. Then, I think it is because of Heidegger. At the time, we used to study classical antiquity and the pre-socratics through Heidegger and Nietzsche’s work. My own philosophical question was : « Is it possible to be Presocratic in some other way than the Heideggerian one? » The answer determinated my interest and passion for the sophists. I found it (...) extraordinary when I realized that Gorgias and his treatise « On Nature or the Non-Existent » presented a new way of thinking about Parmenides. If you are a Heideggerian, Parmenides is the origin of philosophy, the origin of thought. But very quickly, only fifty years after Parmenides, Gorgias came and said: « Look, what Parmenides says about Being, he could say about Non-being, and I myself can say it about Non-being. So, is Being an origin, an “Es gibt”, "There Is", just needing to be unconcealed? Or is it simply a product of Parmenides’ poem : Being is an effect of saying, and I can show it ». And he did show it, quite critically. This was my first insight. (shrink)

The Quest to Understand Human Affairs presents fifty previously unpublished essays by Vincent Ostrom on the U.S. Government's environmental problems and resource governance and span the six decades of Ostrom's career in political science and public administration. Including everything from a 1947 essay on Western issues in national politics to ending with a 2004 manuscript on Constitutional foundations and federal institutional forms, these essays examine significant developments in administration, constitutional design, and the evolution of theory and practice in the field (...) of institutional analysis and development during the second half of the twentieth century and first decade of the new millennium. (shrink)

It is usually supposed that, with his dichotomy paradox, Zeno gave birth to the modern so-called supertask debate – the debate of whether carrying out an infinite sequence of actions or operations...

U.S. regulations do not afford consistent protections to human research subjects. One complaint is that they focus on federally sponsored research, with private research covered only if it falls under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration. This paper examines a deeper problem: Even when the regulations do apply, they still do not afford consistent standards of protection. The U.S. Common Rule and related FDA regulations lack a workable regulatory control mechanism.