In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

Lewis Gordon presents the first detailed existential phenomenological investigation of antiblack racism as a form of Sartrean bad faith. Bad faith, the attitude in which human beings attempt to evade freedom and responsibility, is treated as a constant possibility of human existence. Antiblack racism, the attitude and practice that involve the construction of black people as fundamentally inferior and subhuman, is examined as an effort to evade the responsibilities of a human and humane world. Gordon argues that the (...) concept of bad faith militates against any human science that is built upon a theory of human nature and as such offers an analysis of antiblack racism that stands as a challenge to our ordinary assumptions of what it means to be human. (shrink)

An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement, conventional religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs (...) when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically. (shrink)

In U.S. v. American Library Association (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which mandated that libraries receiving federal funding for public Internet access install content-filtering programs on computers which provide that access. These programs analyze incoming content, and block the receipt of objectionable material, in particular pornography. Thus, patrons at public libraries are protected from unintentionally (or intentionally) accessing objectionable material, and, in the case of minors, from accessing potentially damaging material. At least, that is (...) the official story. In this paper, I develop three points. (1) I argue that CIPA and ALA are better read as examples of the enforcement of a regime of normative sexuality. The question of minors accessing pornography is only relevant to the official story insofar as it provides a rhetorically persuasive example of deviance from that normative regime. CIPAs full target includes information about topics such as homosexuality and contraception. (2) Rather than (or in addition to) punishing deviances directly, CIPA attempts to constitute a “public” in which such deviancy can never occur in the first place. Hence, the designation of a “public” space serves to domesticate alternative sexualities and to sanitize that space of sexual difference. (3) This interaction at the border of the public and private spheres offers an opportunity to reflect on and underscore the ways that subject formation and subjectivity are mediated through technological artifacts like the Internet. (shrink)

This article tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections (...) of the article. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, this approach recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem that would not be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus. (shrink)

A piece of folklore enjoys some currency among philosophical Bayesians, according to which Bayesian agents that, intuitively speaking, spread their credence over the entire space of available hypotheses are certain to converge to the truth. The goals of the present discussion are to show that kernel of truth in this folklore is in some ways fairly small and to argue that Bayesian convergence-to-the-truth results are a liability for Bayesianism as an account of rationality, since they render a certain sort of (...) arrogance rationally mandatory. (shrink)

The classical view of the relationship between necessity and apriority, defended by Leibniz and Kant, is that all necessary truths are known a priori. The classical view is now almost universally rejected, ever since Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam discovered that there are necessary truths that are known only a posteriori. However, in recent years a new debate has emerged over the epistemology of these necessary a posteriori truths. According to one view – call it the neo-classical view – knowledge (...) of a necessary truth always depends on at least one item of a priori knowledge. According to the rival view – call it the neoempiricist view – our knowledge of necessity is sometimes broadly empirical. In this paper I present and defend an argument against the neo-empiricist view. I argue that knowledge of the necessity of a necessary truth could not be broadly empirical. (shrink)

Her Majesty's Children reveals not only a deeply personal account of the experience of racism but is also a revolutionary work that asks us to reconsider our ordinary practices and lives to recognize and resist the traces of a colonial age of racism that so many claim is only part of our past.

This is the second volume of analytical commentary on Wittgenstein's masterpiece, the Philosophical Investigations. Like the first, it consists of philosophical essays and critical exegesis. The six essays deal comprehensively with various themes in Wittgenstein''s philosophy: the relationship between his mathematics and his philosophy of mind; his conception of grammar and rules of grammar; the relation between a rule and what accords with a rule; the characterization of rule-following as mastery of a technique manifest in practice; his notion of a (...) form of life, and of agreement in definitions and judgements; a comprehensive investigation into his account of logical and mathematical necessity and other topics. (shrink)

CHAPTER Heidegger and the Quantum Brain In any case the orientation to "I" and " consciousness" and re-presentation ...

Theories of sentence production that involve a convergence of activation from conceptual‐semantic and syntactic‐sequential units inspired a connectionist model that was trained to produce simple sentences. The model used a learning algorithm that resulted in a sharing of responsibility (or “division of labor”) between syntactic and semantic inputs for lexical activation according to their predictive power. Semantically rich, or “heavy”, verbs in the model came to rely on semantic cues more than on syntactic cues, whereas semantically impoverished, or “light”, verbs (...) relied more on syntactic cues. When the syntactic and semantic inputs were lesioned, the model exhibited patterns of production characteristic of agrammatic and anomic aphasic patients, respectively. Anomic models tended to lose the ability to retrieve heavy verbs, whereas agrammatic models were more impaired in retrieving light verbs. These results obtained in both sentence production and single‐word naming simulations. Moreover, simulated agrammatic lexical retrieval was more impaired overall in sentences than in single‐word tasks, in agreement with the literature. The results provide a demonstration of the division‐of‐labor principle, as well as general support for the claim that connectionist learning principles can contribute to the understanding of non‐transparent neuropsychological dissociations. (shrink)

In this paper, I ponder the question of whether Socrates follows a method of investigation — the method of hypothesis — which he advocates in Plato's Phaedo. The evidence in the dialogue suggests that he does not follow the method, which raises additional questions: If he fails to do so, why does he articulate the method? Does his statement of method affect his actions or is it mainly forgotten? Although Socrates is a fictional character, his actions in the Phaedo suggests (...) questions about the function of espoused methods in actual situations. (shrink)

This paper uses Heidegger’s discussion of artifacts in Being and Time to motivate a phenomenological critique of Digital Rights Management regimes such as the one that allows DVDs to require one to watch commercials and copyright notices. In the first section, I briefly sketch traditional ethical approaches to intellectual property and indicate the gap that a phenomenological approach can fill. In section 2, following Heidegger’s discussion in Being and Time, I analyze DRM technologies as exemplary of the breakdown of things (...) as ready-to-hand; in particular, DRM is an example of what Heidegger calls "obstinacy." In section 3, I argue that this sort of concern generalizes beyond digital rights management due to its imbrication in ordinary, everyday experience. Finally, in section 4, I propose a framework for analyzing DRM in terms of our individuation from "the They," emphasizing how DRM undermines the functioning of "responsibility.". (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine recent developments in intellectual property law. In particular, from a point of view informed primarily by Marx and Foucault, I study (a) the rhetoric surrounding the Metallica lawsuit against Napster; (b) a pair of conflicting trademark cases surrounding the ownership of a word on the Internet; and (c) the software industry's move to win approval for “shrink-wrap” or “click here” licenses. I conclude that these developments indicate a new form of disciplinary power, where people (...) are individuated ex ante as consumers. Despite the celebrations of market cyberlibertarians, this move actually masks an increase in overt state power as the state apparatus is invoked to force individuals to agree to behave as disciplined consumers and accede to the system in the first place. (shrink)

The world's leading authorities in the sciences and humanities—dozens of top scholars, including three Nobel laureates—join a cultural and intellectual battle that leaves no human life untouched. Is the universe self-existent, self-sufficient, and self-organizing, or is it grounded instead in a reality that transcends space, time, matter, and energy?

This paper shows how the critical questions matching an argumentation scheme can be mod-eled in the Carneades argumentation system as three kinds of premises. Ordinary premises hold only if they are supported by sufficient arguments. Assumptions hold, by default, until they have been questioned. With exceptions the negation holds, by default, until the exception has been supported by sufficient arguments. By “sufficient arguments”, we mean arguments sufficient to satisfy the applicable proof standard.

This paper presents a formalization of informal logic using the Carneades Argumentation System, a formal, computational model of argument that consists of a formal model of argument graphs and audiences. Conflicts between pro and con arguments are resolved using proof standards, such as preponderance of the evidence. Carneades also formalizes argumentation schemes. Schemes can be used to check whether a given argument instantiates the types of argument deemed normatively appropriate for the type of dialogue.

Anja Jauernig here addresses with great scholarship and philosophical insight a central issue in the interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason: ‘The project.

"Arranged into four main parts, the book begins by selecting readings from classical theorists in order to review formative ideas on the transition to modern society. It then moves on to address, at length, the modernizationists' discussion of how development changes people and the response from dependency and world-system theorists. A final section assembles eight of the most influential writings on the social effects of globalization."--Jacket.

_How Do You Know?_ explores problems of knowledge that arise in everyday life. If you are not an expert, how can you know that another person is an expert? If experts are politically biased should you still trust them? More generally, how should you approach the testimony of other people: treat it all as "innocent until proven guilty," or is that too simple? Does the internet make us better knowers, or is it just a minefield of misinformation? Is it always (...) irrational to believe a conspiracy theory? Suppose someone just as intelligent and well-informed as you are disagrees with you about something, how should that affect your belief? Can we have knowledge of what is right and wrong? _How Do You Know?_ approaches these issues through the lens of social epistemology and via the preeminently social genre of philosophical dialogue. Its characters think and speak like real people in the world today, discussing and debating issues that are current, practically relevant, and even controversial—while equipping readers with tools and concepts to see more clearly for themselves. (shrink)

The contention that cognitive psychology and radical behaviorism yield equivalent accounts of decision making and problem solving is examined by contrasting a framework of cognitive interpretation, Dennett's intentional stance, with a corresponding interpretive stance derived from contextualism. The insistence of radical behaviorists that private events such as thoughts and feelings belong in a science of human behavior is indicted in view of their failure to provide a credible interpretation of complex human behavior. Dennett's interpretation of intentional systems is an exemplar (...) of the interpretive stance radical behaviorism requires; a corresponding interpretive position can be based initially on a radical behaviorist view of human behavior and its determinants. This "contextual stance" is ontologically and methodologically distinct from the intentional stance over the range of explanations for which scientific psychology, cognitive or behaviorist, is responsible. (shrink)

Knowledge can be transmitted by a valid deductive inference. If I know that p, and I know that if p then q, then I can infer that q, and I can thereby come to know that q. What feature of a valid deductive inference enables it to transmit knowledge? In some cases, it is a proof of validity that grounds the transmission of knowledge. If the subject can prove that her inference follows a valid rule, then her inference transmits knowledge. (...) However, this only pushes the question back to the inference that was made in this proof. What feature of that inference enables it to transmit knowledge? A vicious regress looms here. Every proof requires a valid inference, and every valid inference must follow at least one rule of inference. So every proof must follow at least one rule of inference. Therefore not every valid inference that transmits knowledge can acquire this power through a proof, on pain of vicious infinite regress. So it must be possible to transmit knowledge by making an inference that follows an underived rule. A deductive inference that follows an underived rule is what I will call a basic deductive inference. It must be possible to transmit knowledge by making a basic deductive inference. But how is this possible? What feature of a basic deductive inference gives it this power to transmit knowledge? (shrink)

We argue that cognitive empathy and other instances of mental state attribution are a byproduct of self-awareness. Evidence is brought to bear on this proposition from comparative psychology, early child development, neuropsychology, and abnormal behavior.

John McDowell is one of the most influential contemporary philosophers in a number of fields; but, the editors of Reason in Nature argue, the significance of hi.