For many contemporary liberals, Anglo-American democracy seems unimpeachably the best political form. In contrast, adherence to democratic values seems an area in which most Marxian regimes, and perhaps Marx himself, are strikingly deficient. Further, Marxian theory insists on the existence of oppressive ruling classes in all capitalist societies and on the need for class struggle and violent revolution to achieve a more cooperative regime – theses which liberal social theories tend to dismiss peremptorily. From the perspective of modern liberal democratic (...) theory, Marxian arguments seem prima facie outlandish and even morally objectionable. (shrink)

What is systematic in philosophy is its description of the world we inhabit. , said Whitehead, . We need not accept Whitehead's comparison of with the systemof naturalsciences to take his point. The philosophical description of the world issystematic since may delude us; , that is, in lying outside ; we lack a conviction that they have an application to any element of our experience, which the members of a system possess, according to Whitehead, in characterizing every element. What is (...) the nature of this system of description? (shrink)

The question of emotion in argumentation has received considerable attention in recent years. But there is a tension between the traditional normative role of informal logic, and the inclusion of emotion which is viewed as notoriously unstable. Here I argue that that, a] there is always emotion in an argument; b] that the presence of emotion is a good thing; and c] that we can and ought model and teach the use of emotion in Argumentation Theory.

. Moral innatism, connatural ideas, and impuissance in daily affairs: James Q. Wilson's acrobatic dive into an empty pool. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 77-82.

Different accounts of what it is for something to have a social nature have been given. Sociality does not appear to be a category worthy of philosophical focus, given some of these accounts. If sociality is construed as plural subjecthood, it emerges as a category crucial for our understanding of the human condition. Plural subjects are constituted by a joint commitment of two or more persons to do something as a body. Such commitments generate rights and obligations of a special (...) type, and underlie such phenomena as social conventions, agreements, shared action and social groups on one standard understanding of what these are. (shrink)

In (Harman 2007) I argued “that a purely objective account of conscious experience cannot always by itself give an understanding of what it is like to have that experience.” Following Nagel (1974), I suggested that such a gap “has no obvious metaphysical implications. It [merely] reflects the distinction between two kinds of understanding,” objective and subjective, where subjective understanding or “Das Verstehen” (Dilthey 1883/1989) of another creature’s experience involves knowing what it is like to have that experience—knowing what sort of (...) experience of one’s own would correspond to the other creature’s experience. (shrink)

Les ordinateurs, peuvent-ils être un instrument pour faire de la philosophie? La réponse proposée par cet article développe dix moments dont les thèmes sont.