Education and cognition research today generally recognize the tri-dimensional nature of reasoning processes as involving cognitive, social and emotional phenomena. However, there is so far no theoretical framework articulating these three dimensions from a descriptive perspective. This paper aims at presenting a first model of how group emotions work in collective reasoning, and specifies their social and cognitive functions. This model is inspired both from a multidisciplinary literature review and our extensive previous empirical work on an international corpus of videotaped (...) student debates. The cognitive function of emotions is defined in reference to the process of schematization and associated emotional framing. On the other hand, the social function of emotions refers to recognition-oriented behaviors that correspond to engagement into specific types of group talk, implying specific politeness rules or face-preservation systems. We believe that our multi-dimensional and multi-level approach to group reasoning, which mostly employs a linguistic perspective, can be applied to a diversity of contexts. We hope it will serve as a basis for further discussion on the role of emotions in reasoning among the interdisciplinary community of argumentation studies. (shrink)

This paper consists of a detailed analysis of how the participants in a debate build their emotional position during the interaction and how such a position is strongly related to the conclusion they defend. In this case study, teenage Mexican, students, arguing about access to drinking water, display extensive discursive work on the emotional tonality given to the issue. Plantin’s methodological tools are adopted to follow two alternative emotional framings produced by disagreeing students, starting from a common, highly negative, thymic (...) tonality. Through the analysis of four parameters we describe how the emotional dimension of schematization is argumentatively relevant. In authentic discourse, it is impossible to separate emotion from reason. The conclusion section discusses the implications for the design of argumentation-based pedagogical activities. (shrink)

This important new book develops a new concept of autonomy. The notion of autonomy has emerged as central to contemporary moral and political philosophy, particularly in the area of applied ethics. professor Dworkin examines the nature and value of autonomy and uses the concept to analyse various practical moral issues such as proxy consent in the medical context, paternalism, and entrapment by law enforcement officials.

I take as my starting point the “one very simple principle” proclaimed by Mill in On Liberty … “That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do (...) or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.”. (shrink)

Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated. There are times, G. A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not (...) give merely to get, but relate to each other in a spirit of equality and community. Would such socialist norms be desirable across society as a whole? Why not? Whole societies may differ from camping trips, but it is still attractive when people treat each other with the equal regard that such trips exhibit. But, however desirable it may be, many claim that socialism is impossible. Cohen writes that the biggest obstacle to socialism isn't, as often argued, intractable human selfishness--it's rather the lack of obvious means to harness the human generosity that is there. Lacking those means, we rely on the market. But there are many ways of confining the sway of the market: there are desirable changes that can move us toward a socialist society in which, to quote Albert Einstein, humanity has "overcome and advanced beyond the predatory stage of human development.". (shrink)

In spatial sequence synaesthesia ordinal stimuli are perceived as arranged in peripersonal space. Using fMRI, we examined the neural bases of SSS and colour synaesthesia for spoken words in a late-blind synaesthete, JF. He reported days of the week and months of the year as both coloured and spatially ordered in peripersonal space; parts of the days and festivities of the year were spatially ordered but uncoloured. Words that denote time-units and triggered no concurrents were used in a control condition. (...) Both conditions inducing SSS activated the occipito-parietal, infero-frontal and insular cortex. The colour area hOC4v was engaged when the synaesthetic experience included colour. These results confirm the continued recruitment of visual colour cortex in this late-blind synaesthetes. Synaesthesia also involved activation in inferior frontal cortex, which may be related to spatial memory and detection, and in the insula, which might contribute to audiovisual integration related to the processing of inducers and concurrents. (shrink)

Our concern in this essay are the roles of religious conviction in what we call a “publicly justified polity” — one in which the laws conform to the Principle of Public Justification, according to which (in a sense that will become clearer) each citizen must have conclusive reason to accept each law as binding. According to “justificatory liberalism,”1 this public justification requirement follows from the core liberal commitment of respect for the freedom and equality of all citizens.2 To respect each (...) as free and equal requires that no one simply be forced to submit to the judgments of others as to what she must do. Laws must be justified to those subject to them — each must accept grounds that justify the law. As Kant indicated, if such a condition is achieved, each is both subject and legislator: each is subject to the law, yet each legislates the law, and so all our free and equal under the law.3 Now it would appear that if we are to justify laws to each and every person, the reasons for these laws must be “accessible to all.”4 Religious reasons, however, are not shared by everyone, and may be inaccessible to some: they would thereby seem inappropriate in public justification. On the face of it, justificatory liberals seem committed to expunging religious-based reasoning from political justification. Not surprisingly, this apparent commitment of justificatory liberalism is adamantly rejected by many citizens of faith who consider themselves liberals. These citizens embrace the traditional liberal freedoms and rights and, moreover, reject any suggestion that a legitimate polity might seek to establish a religion, much less a theocracy. Yet they.. (shrink)

Prendendo spunto dall’idea di moralità di I. Murdoch, l’articolo considera due diverse idee di libertà: una secondo la quale la libertà consiste nell’esercizio della scelta, e perciò coinvolge solo la volontà, e una secondo la quale la libertà consiste nella possibilità di arricchire l’esperienza, e coinvolge perciò la nostra capacità simbolica. Alla luce di queste concezioni viene ripercorso il dibattito circa le libertà delle donne sul proprio corpo e discussa la possibilità di adottare, in materia, la categoria dei diritti indisponibili.

Strokes of Luck provides a detailed and wide-ranging examination of the role of luck in moral and political philosophy. The first part tackles debates in moral luck, which are concerned with the assignment of blameworthiness to individuals who are separated only by lucky differences. ‘Anti-luckists’ think that an agent who, for example, attempts and succeeds in an assassination and an agent who attempts and fails are equally blameworthy. This book defends an ‘anti-anti-luckist’ argument, according to which the successful assassin is (...) more blameworthy than the unsuccessful one. Moreover, the successful assassin is, all things equal, a worse person than the unsuccessful one. The worldly outcomes of our acts can make an all-important difference, not only to how bad our acts can be deemed, but to how bad we are. The second part enters into debates about distributive justice. It is argued that the attempt to neutralize luck in the distribution of advantages among individuals does not deserve its prominence in political philosophy: the ‘luck egalitarian’ programme is flawed. A better way forward is to re-invest in John Rawls’s ‘justice as fairness, which demonstrates a superior way of taming the bad effects of luck and unchosen disadvantage. (shrink)

This book contains the material for a first course in pure model theory with applications to differentially closed fields.

This article presents six ideas about the construction of emotion: (a) Emotions are more readily distinguished by the situations they signify than by patterns of bodily responses; (b) emotions emerge from, rather than cause, emotional thoughts, feelings, and expressions; (c) the impact of emotions is constrained by the nature of the situations they represent; (d) in the OCC account (the model proposed by Ortony, Clore, and Collins in 1988), appraisals are psychological aspects of situations that distinguish one emotion from another, (...) rather than triggers that elicit emotions; (e) analyses of the affective lexicon indicate that emotion words refer to internal mental states focused on affect; (f) the modularity of emotion, long sought in biology and behavior, exists as mental schemas for interpreting human experience in story, song, drama, and conversation. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to argue for a new version of ‘inference-to-the-best-explanation’ scientific realism, which I characterize as Best Theory Realism or ‘BTR’. On BTR, the realist needs only to embrace a commitment to the truth or approximate truth of the best theories in a field, those which are unique in satisfying the highest standards of empirical success in a mature field with many successful but falsified predecessors. I argue that taking our best theories to be true is (...) justified because it provides the best explanation of the predictive success of their predecessors and their own special success. Against standard and especially structural realism, I argue against the claim that the best explanations of the success of theories is provided by identifying their true components, such as structural relations between unobservable, which are preserved across theory change. In particular, I criticize Ladyman's and Carrier’s structural account of the success of phlogiston theory, and Worrall's well-known structural account of the success of Fresnel’s theory of light. I argue that these accounts tacitly assume the truth of our best theories, which in any case provides a better explanation of these theories’ success than the structural account. Structural realism is now defended as the only version of realism that is able to surmount the pessimistic meta-induction and the general problem that successful theories involve ontological claims concerning unobservable entities that are abandoned and falsified in theory-change. I argue that Best Theory Realism can overcome the pessimistic meta-induction and this general problem posed by theory-change. Our best theories possess a characteristic which sharply distinguishes them from their successful but false predecessors. Furthermore ‘inference-to-the-best-explanation’ confirmation can establish the truth of our best theories and thus trumps the pessimistic inductive reasoning which is supposed to show that even our best theories are most likely false in their claims concerning unobservable entities and processes. (shrink)

This paper develops a stronger version of ‘inference-to-the-best explanation’ scientific realism. I argue against three standard assumptions of current realists: realism is confirmed if it provides the best explanation of theories’ predictive success ; the realist claim that successful theories are always approximately true provides the best explanation of their success ; and realists are committed to giving the same sort of truth-based explanation of superseded theories’ success that they give to explain our best current theories’ success. On the positive (...) side, I argue that the confirmation of realism requires explaining theories’ explanatory success, not just their predictive success ; in turn this task requires a richer realist model of explanation that brings into the explanans both successful theories’ epistemic virtues and the standards governing these virtues, as well as truth; this richer realist model is further confirmed because it can better explain the success of theories in gaining wide acceptance among scientists; and the model is further supported because it is superior to ‘preservative realism ’ in providing a plausible rebuttal of the pessimistic meta-induction from the many past successful-but-false theories to the like- lihood that our best current theories are likewise false. (shrink)

As we read his work, John Rawls was developing an innovative approach to political philosophy, and Political Liberalism struggles with different ways to model these new insights. This article presents four models of political liberalism, particularly focusing on understanding the nature of overlapping consensus and its relation to public reason. Beyond clarifying Rawls’s insights, we aim to spur readers to reassemble the rich elements of Political Liberalism to produce tractable and enlightening models of political life among free and equal citizens (...) under conditions of deep diversity to advance the public reason project. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of Neutrality Liberal Moral Neutrality Liberal Political Neutrality The Implications of Liberal Political Neutrality Notes.

Benatar’s central argument for antinatalism develops an asymmetry between the pain and pleasure in a potential life. I am going to present an alternative route to the antinatalist conclusion. I argue that duties require victims and that as a result there is no duty to create the pleasures contained within a prospective life but a duty not to create any of its sufferings. My argument can supplement Benatar’s, but it also enjoys some advantages: it achieves a better fit with our (...) intuitions; it does not require us to acknowledge that life is a harm, or that a world devoid of life is a good thing; and it is easy to see why it does not have any pro-mortalist implications. (shrink)

This accessible, college-level introduction to the major theories of public morality begins with a discussion of why we should seek a publicly justified public morality and how we might go about publicly justifying social principles. The latter part of the volume considers the basic principles of public morality, evaluating the concepts of J.S. Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, John Rawls, David Gauthier, and Joel Feinberg, as well as contemporary philosophers. Theories addressed include game theory, social choice (...) theory, and the ideas of rational action, rational bargaining, and public good. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This essay responds to David Enoch’s “The Disorder of Public Reason,” published in a previous issue of Ethics. I seek to set the record straight on several of the many charges Enoch makes. More importantly, having clarified some of the more basic points, I make some preliminary efforts at identifying when his brand of moral realism and my version of public reason differ—and, perhaps, where they are more compatible than one might think.

I defend a realist commitment to the truth of our most empirically successful current scientific theories—on the ground that it provides the best explanation of their success and the success of their falsified predecessors. I argue that this Best Current Theory Realism (BCTR) is superior to preservative realism (PR) and the structural realism (SR). I show that PR and SR rest on the implausible assumption that the success of outdated theories requires the realist to hold that these theories possessed truthful (...) components. PR is undone by the fact that past theories succeeded even though their ontological claims about unobservables are false. SR backpeddles to argue that the realist is only committed to the truth about the structure of relations implied by the outdated theory, in order to explain its success. I argue that the structural component of theories is too bare-bones thin to explain the predictive/explanatory success of outdated theories. I conclude that BCTR can meet these objections to PR and SR, and also overcome the pessimistic meta-induction. (shrink)

In this issue of Philosophical Studies, Richard Arneson, Jonathan Quong and Robert Talisse contribute papers discussing The Order of Public Reason (OPR). All press what I call “agent-type challenges” to the project of OPR. In different ways they all focus on a type (or types) of moral (or sometimes not-so-moral) agent. Arneson presents a good person who is so concerned with doing the best thing she does not truly endorse social morality; Quong a bad person who rejects it and violates (...) the basic rights of others, and Talisse a morally ugly person, a hypocrite, who criticizes others for failing to do what he does not do. All suggest that OPR does not give a satisfying account of what we are to say to, or how we should act towards, such agents. In my response I highlight some core concerns of OPR, while also seeking to show that OPR does not say quite what they think it says, and it often leaves them room for saying what they would like to say about such agents. (shrink)

Abstract:When people reason on the basis of moral rules, do they suppose that in the absence of a prohibitory rule they are free to act, or do they suppose that morality always requires a justification establishing a permission to act? In this essay we present a series of learning experiments that indicate when learners tend to close their system on the basis of natural liberty and when on the principle of residual prohibition. Those who are taught prohibitory rules tend to (...) infer natural liberty while those taught permission rules tend to infer residual prohibition. In mixed cases, where learners are taught both types of rules, there is some tendency to suppose that natural liberty is the default. Both natural liberty and its denial can be learned; is there a reason to adopt one system of moral rules or the other? We argue that systems of social morality based on a principle of natural liberty have a striking advantage over their competitors: they are well adapted to effectively exploring the constant novel circumstances that arise in open, dynamic, societies. (shrink)

At one point Rawls thought that “a normalization of interests attributed to the parties” is “common to social contract doctrines.” Normalization has a great appeal: once we specify the normalized perspective, we can generate strong and definite principles of justice. Public reasoning is restricted to those who reason from the eligible, normalized, perspective; those who fall outside the “normal” are to be dismissed as unreasonable, unjust, or illiberal. As Rawls’s political liberalism project developed he increasingly relaxed his normalization assumptions, allowing (...) room for not only different conceptions of the good, but of justice. This paper explores the post-Rawlsian movement in public reason to maximally relax, or even abandon, normalizing assumptions, drawing on a maximal diversity of normative perspectives in public justification. The public reason project is at a critical juncture. Are we to look back, defending Rawls’s substantive conclusions by devising new defenses of normalization, circling the wagons around the cherished two principles? Or are we to seek to fulfill the promise of public reason as providing a common public and moral world in the midst of diversity? (shrink)

In replying to Steven Wall’s and Andrew Lister’s thoughtful essays on my account of justificatory liberalism in this issue, I respond to many of their specific criticisms while taking the opportunity to explicate the foundations of justificatory liberalism. Justificatory liberalism takes seriously the moral requirement to justify all claims of authority over others, as well as all coercive interferences with their lives. If we do so, although we are by no means committed to libertarianism, we find that that many of (...) our cherished values, moral intuitions, and political aspirations no longer ground the range of authority over others many of us would claim. In this sense, justificatory liberalism is a theory of limited authority and limited government — which is what a genuinely liberal theory must be. (shrink)

In virtue of its form [‘I am here’] must be true on any occasion on which [it is] asserted, and yet the proposition it expresses on each occasion [is] contingent. Intuitively, [‘I am here now’] is deeply, and in some sense universally, true. One need only understand the meaning of [it] to know that it cannot be uttered falsely. The sentence ‘I am here’ has the peculiar property that whenever I utter it, it is bound to be true. Even if (...) I am lost and do not know where I am, I can bravely say ‘I am here’, and know that I am expressing a truth. (shrink)

Under free institutions the exercise of human reason leads to a plurality of reasonable, yet irreconcilable doctrines. Rawls's political liberalism is intended as a response to this fundamental feature of modern democratic life. Justifying coercive political power by appeal to any one (or sample) of these doctrines is, Rawls believes, oppressive and illiberal. If we are to achieve unity without oppression, he tells us, we must all affirm a public political conception that is supported by these diverse reasonable doctrines. The (...) first part of this essay argues that the free use of human reason leads to reasonable pluralism over most of what we call the political. Rawls's notion of the political does not avoid the problem of state oppression under conditions of reasonable pluralism. The second part tries to show how justificatory liberalism provides (1) a conception of the political that takes seriously the fact that the free use of human reason leads us to sharply disagree in the domain of the political while (2) articulating a conception of the political according to which the coercive intervention of the state must be justified by public reasons. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is a family of theories according to which liberal political institutions, social structures, and/or basic social rules are politically or morally justified if and only if they can be endorsed from the perspective of each and every free and equal "reasonable and rational" person. Let us call these persons "the members of the justificatory public." Public reason liberalism idealizes the members of the justificatory public in three senses. First, the members of the justificatory public are assumed to (...) be free from at least some of the cognitive distortions and biases that often characterize actual people; we suppose that they generally reason in a sound way on the basis of relevant information. Different versions of public reason liberalism press this idealization quite far, while others insist on a "moderate idealization." Secondly, the members of the justificatory public are idealized insofar as it is assumed that each is a good-willed person, concerned with living with others on terms that are mutually acceptable. In Rawls's language, we suppose that they are not simply rational, but "reasonable": they have a form of "moral sensibility" according to which they are ready to propose fair terms of cooperation, and are willing to abide by them "provided others can be relied on to do likewise." The members of the justificatory public are thus idealized insofar as they are assumed to be moved by their sense of justice, or their aim to respect others as free and equal persons. This leads to a third idealization: by assuming that the members of the justificatory public are moved by this moral sensibility, it is supposed that they do not pay attention to their reasons to ignore their sense of justice . More generally, any specific version of public reason liberalism will hold that some reasons of actual people are not relevant to the justificatory question: the members of the justificatory public "bracket" these reasons in their deliberations. (shrink)

Divine command theories of metaethics are commonly rejected on the basis of the Euthyphro problem. In this paper, I argue that the Euthyphro can be raised for all forms of moral realism. I go on to argue that this does not matter as the Euthyphro is not really a problem after all. I then briefly outline some of the attractions of a divine command theory of metaethics. I suggest that given one of the major reasons for rejecting such an analysis (...) has been found to be unsound divine command theories deserve to be taken more seriously in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)