According to an influential research program in cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics, there is a deep, special connection between generics and pernicious aspects of social cognition such as stereotyping. Specifically, generics are thought to exacerbate our propensity to essentialize, lead us to overgeneralize based on scarce evidence, and lead to other epistemically dubious patterns of inference. Recently, however, several studies have put empirical and theoretical pressure on some of the main tenets of this research program. The goal of this paper (...) is to bring these results together in a comprehensive narrative and systematically evaluate their impact on the hypothesis that generics have a uniquely problematic effect on our social and cognitive capacities. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an essentialist model of the semantics of slurs. I defend the view that slurs are a species of kind terms: Slur concepts encode mini-theories which represent an essence-like element that is causally connected to a set of negatively-valenced stereotypical features of a social group. The truth-conditional contribution of slur nouns can then be captured by the following schema: For a given slur S of a social group G and a person P, S is true of (...) P iff P bears the “essence” of G—whatever this essence is—which is causally responsible for stereotypical negative features associated with G and predicted of P. Since there is no essence that is causally responsible for stereotypical negative features of a social group, slurs have null-extension, and consequently, many sentences containing them are either meaningless or false. After giving a detailed outline of my theory, I show that it receives strong linguistic support. In particular, it can account for a wide range of linguistic cases that are regarded as challenging, central data for any theory of slurs. Finally, I show that my theory also receives convergent support from cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors. Throughout the past several decades, psychological essentialism has emerged as an extremely active area of research in cognitive science. More recently, it has also attracted attention from philosophers, who put the empirical results to use in many different philosophical areas, ranging from philosophy of mind and cognitive science to social (...) philosophy. This article aims to give philosophers who are new to the topic an overview of the key empirical findings surrounding psychological essentialism, and some of the ways the hypothesis and its related findings have been discussed, extended, and applied in philosophical research. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing on an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a ‘constrained proceduralist’ (...) account of democratic self-government, or the ‘convergence’ account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier. (shrink)

This book advances a novel justification for the idea of "public reason": citizens within diverse societies can realize the ideal of shared political autonomy, despite their adherence to different religious and philosophical views, by deciding fundamental political questions with "public reasons." Public reasons draw upon or are derived from ecumenical political ideas, such as toleration and equal citizenship, and mutually acceptable forms of reasoning, like those of the sciences. This book explains that if citizens share equal political autonomy—and thereby constitute (...) "a civic people"—they will not suffer from alienation or domination and can enjoy relations of civic friendship. Moreover, it contends that the ideal of shared political autonomy cannot be realized by alternative accounts of public justification that eschew any necessary role for public reasons. In addition to explaining how the ideal of political autonomy justifies the idea of public reason, this book presents a new analysis of the relation between public reason and "ideal theory": by engaging in "public reasoning," citizens help create a just society that can secure the free compliance of all. It also explores the distinctive policy implications of the ideal of political autonomy for gender equality, families, children, and education. (shrink)

In two recent papers, Rose and Nichols present evidence in favor of the view that humans represent category essences in terms of a telos, such as honey-making, and not in terms of scientific essences, such as bee DNA. In this paper, I challenge their interpretation of the evidence, and show that it is directly predicted by the main theory they seek to undermine. I argue that their results can be explained as instances of diagnostic reasoning about scientific essences.

In this paper, I defend Non-Inferentialism about mental states, the view that we can perceive some mental states in a direct, non-inferential way. First, I discuss how the question of mental state perception is to be understood in light of recent debates in the philosophy of perception, and reconstruct Non-Inferentialism in a way that makes the question at hand—whether we can perceive mental states or not—scientifically tractable. Next, I motivate Non-Inferentialism by showing that under the assumption of the widely-accepted Principle (...) of Cognitive Economy, any account that treats mental state perception as an inferential process commits itself to an unrealistically inefficient picture of our cognitive architecture. Drawing on research in cognitive science, I will then show that my Non-Inferentialist view receives direct support by the available empirical evidence. I conclude that there is no psychologically relevant sense in which perception of mental states differs from paradigmatic cases of perception, such as the perception of ordinary objects. (shrink)

In paradigmatic cases of subtweeting, one Twitter user critically or mockingly tweets about another person without mentioning their username or their name. In this chapter, we give an account of the strategic aims of subtweeting and the mechanics through which it achieves them. We thereby hope to shed light on the distinctive communicative and moral texture of subtweeting while filling in a gap in the philosophical literature on strategic speech in social media. We first specify what subtweets are and identify (...) the central features that give rise to their strategic mechanics. Next, we draw attention to problematic aspects of subtweeting and consider conditions under which subtweeting can be justified on moral and prudential grounds. The chapter concludes by discussing practical upshots and noting avenues for future work. (shrink)

Susan Okin criticizes John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ because it does not apply principles of justice directly to gender relations within households. We explain how one can be a ‘political liberal feminist’ by distinguishing between two kinds of justice: the first we call ‘legitimacy justice’, conceptions of which apply to the ‘legally coercive structure’ of society; the second we call ‘ethos justice’, conceptions of which apply to citizens’ ‘non-coercive’ relations. We agree with Okin that a society in which most persons act (...) in accordance with ‘gender equal’ ethos justice is morally superior to one in which most persons do not. A shared commitment to a particular conception of ethos justice, however, cannot be required by a conception of legitimacy justice. A political liberal feminist is committed to promoting gender equality with respect to both legitimacy justice and ethos justice, but recognizes that different means are necessary to do so. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that the kind of citizenship education required by political liberalism demands ‘far less’ than that required by comprehensive liberalism. Many educational and political theorists who have explored the implications of political liberalism for education policy have disputed Rawls's claim. Writing from a comprehensive liberal perspective, Amy Gutmann contends that the justificatory differences between political and comprehensive liberalism generally have no practical significance for citizenship education. Political liberals such as Stephen Macedo and Victoria Costa maintain that political liberalism (...) requires a form of citizenship education that is far more demanding than that suggested by Rawls. Gordon Davis and Blain Neufeld, in contrast, defend Rawls's position. These different views have implications for the content of mandatory citizenship education, understanding of the ‘common school ideal,’ and the scope for educational choice within the framework of political liberalism. However, the differences between Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa, on the one hand, and Davis and Neufeld, on the other, might be attributable, at least in part, to their different foci. Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa focus on non-ideal theory, specifically the contemporary American context, whereas Davis and Neufeld begin, as does Rawls, within ideal theory, and consider non-ideal circumstances from that perspective. (shrink)

Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of 'public reason' as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting 'ideal theory'. This chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual 'civic' respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply freely with those proposals should they become law. Hence public reasoning involves (...) 'local ideal theorizing': the justification of political proposals includes their consideration and evaluation under conditions of compliance with them by the citizens to whom those justifications are addressed. Local ideal theorizing, moreover, can lead to 'full ideal theorizing', wherein citizens outline and evaluate an amended version of their society’s 'basic structure'. This argument is illustrated by some recent empirical work on inequality within the United States. (shrink)

This article explores a concept of artistic transgression I call aesthetic disobedience that runs parallel to the political concept of civil disobedience. Acts of civil disobedience break some law in order to publicly draw attention to and recommend the reform of a conflict between the commitments of a legal system and some shared commitments of a community. Likewise, acts of aesthetic disobedience break some entrenched artworld norm in order to publicly draw attention to and recommend the reform of a conflict (...) between artworld commitments and some shared commitments of a community. Considering artistic transgressions under the concept of aesthetic disobedience highlights often-overlooked features of modern artworld practices. Most significantly, it draws attention to the deliberative participation of a wide variety of citizens of the artworld, including not just artists and performers but also members of audiences, in the transformation of the rules and boundaries of the artworld itself. (shrink)

In 2014, widespread reports in the popular media that a chatbot named Eugene Goostman had passed the Turing test became further grist for those who argue that the diversionary tactics of chatbots like Goostman and others, such as those who participate in the Loebner competition, are enabled by the open-ended dialog of the Turing test. Some claim a new kind of test of machine intelligence is needed, and one community has advanced the Winograd schema competition to address this gap. We (...) argue to the contrary that implicit in the Turing test is the cooperative challenge of using language to build a practical working understanding, necessitating a human interrogator to monitor and direct the conversation. We give examples which show that, because ambiguity in language is ubiquitous, open-ended conversation is not a flaw but rather the core challenge of the Turing test. We outline a statistical notion of practical working understanding that permits a reasonable amount of ambiguity, but nevertheless requires that ambiguity be resolved sufficiently for the agents to make progress. (shrink)

In this article I revise and defend a core feature of political liberalism, namely, the idea that principles of political justice should be limited in their scope of application to what John Rawls calls the ‘basic structure of society.’ I refer to this feature as the ‘basic structure restriction’ of political liberalism. According to my account of the basic structure restriction, the basic structure includes all and only those institutions that have a profound effect on the lives of all citizens, (...) and thus those institutions that citizens would want to organize as parts of a fair system of social cooperation. Moreover, maintaining the basic structure as a fair system of social cooperation vis-à-vis all citizens requires the exercise of coercive political power. This account of the basic structure, which I call the ‘legitimacy of coercion account,’ shows that limiting the basic structure to those institutions that are maintained by legally coercive means is not arbitrary, contrary to the claims of critics like G. A. Cohen. Furthermore, by recognizing explicitly that there exist certain institutions – and, in particular, the family – that ought to be regulated partially by coercively maintained principles, my formulation of the basic structure provides a more satisfactory account of the way in which principles of justice should apply to the family than does Rawls’s most considered account. Finally, I explain how my account of the basic structure can incorporate many of S. M. Okin’s proposed policies for promoting gender equality in society. (shrink)

Social stimuli grab our attention: we attend to them in an automatic and bottom-up manner, and ascribe them a higher degree of saliency compared to non-social stimuli. However, it has rarely been investigated how variations in attention affect the processing of social stimuli, although the answer could help us uncover details of social cognition processes such as action understanding. In the present study, we examined how changes to bottom-up attention affects neural EEG-responses associated with intentional action processing. We induced an (...) increase in bottom-up attention by using hypnosis. We recorded the electroencephalographic µ-wave suppression of hypnotized participants when presented with intentional actions in first and third person perspective in a video-clip paradigm. Previous studies have shown that the µ-rhythm is selectively suppressed both when executing and observing goal-directed motor actions; hence it can be used as a neural signal for intentional action processing. Our results show that neutral hypnotic trance increases µ-suppression in highly suggestible participants when they observe intentional actions. This suggests that social action processing is enhanced when bottom-up attentional processes are predominant. Our findings support the Social Relevance Hypothesis, according to which social action processing is a bottom-up driven attentional process, and can thus be altered as a function of bottom-up processing devoted to a social stimulus. (shrink)

One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that it treats certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’, as equal participants in a just international system. Rawls claims that these non-liberal societies should be respected as equals by liberal democratic societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the basic rights of democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence of liberalism’s commitment to the principle of toleration. A number of critics have (...) claimed that Rawls’s treatment of these non-liberal societies is symptomatic of a more general problem with political liberalism, namely, its reliance on toleration as its ‘fundamental principle’. Against this view, I argue that the principle of toleration should not be understood as political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’. This is revealed through a consideration of the normative basis of what Rawls calls the ‘Liberal Principle of Legitimacy’. A correct understanding of political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’, which I claim is a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens, shows that Rawls’s toleration of non-liberal societies is in fact a misapplication of political liberalism to the global domain. Moreover, I explain that political liberalism must assert that the principle of equal civic respect for citizens is the correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in all pluralist societies, and that most ‘decent hierarchical societies’ are pluralist in nature. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental principle as that of equal civic respect for citizens helps to render political liberalism, in both the domestic and international domains, a more coherent and compelling approach to thinking about fundamental political issues. Key Words: civic respect • international relations • justice • political liberalism • Rawls • toleration. (shrink)

Interest in the nature and importance of ‘childhood goods’ recently has emerged within philosophy. Childhood goods, roughly, are things that are good for persons qua children independent of any contribution to the good of persons qua adults. According to Colin Macleod, John Rawls’s political conception of justice as fairness rests upon an adult-centered ‘agency assumption’ and thus is incapable of incorporating childhood goods into its content. Macleod concludes that because of this, justice as fairness cannot be regarded as a complete (...) conception of distributive justice. In this paper I provide a political liberal response to Macleod’s argument by advancing three claims. First, I propose that political liberalism should treat leisure time as a distinct ‘primary good.’ Second, I suggest that leisure time should be distributed via the ‘basic needs principle’ and the ‘difference principle’ for all citizens over the course of their complete lives, including their childhoods. Third, the provision of leisure time in this way supports the realization of childhood goods for citizens. (shrink)

The first principle of Rawls’s conception of justice secures a set of ‘basic liberties’ equally for all citizens within the constitutional structure of society. The ‘worth’ of citizens’ liberties, however, may vary depending upon their wealth. Against Rawls, Cohen contends that an absence of money often can directly constrain citizens’ freedom and not simply its worth. This is because money often can remove legally enforced constraints on what citizens can do. Cohen’s argument – if modified to apply to citizens’ ‘moral (...) powers’ rather than ‘negative liberty’ – threatens a core feature of Rawls’s conception of justice, as it is unclear why the parties within the ‘original position’ would endorse the lexical priority of the first principle over the ‘difference principle’ if both principles similarly shape citizens’ freedom. I concede Cohen’s point regarding the relation between freedom and money but argue that it is not fatal to Rawls’s conception of justice if the ‘basic needs principle’ is understood to enjoy lexical priority over the first principle and is modified to include a right to adequate discretionary time. Nonetheless, Cohen’s argument helpfully highlights the infelicitous nature of Rawls’s terminology with respect to liberty: the basic needs principle, the first principle and the difference principle all should be understood as shaping citizens’ freedom to exercise their moral powers. (shrink)

Over the course of the twentieth century, the logical space available to metaethics has been rather thoroughly mapped out. We now have a pretty good idea of the inhabitable terrain, and each bit of that terrain appears to be occupied by able defenders. So it comes as a surprise when Mark Timmons stakes out previously undiscovered and unclaimed territory. He defends a view that he labels “ethical contextualism,” a position that is at once naturalistic, nonreductive, nonrelativist, irrealist, nondescriptivist, and (...) cognitivist. The list may seem incoherent so as to risk identifying contextualism with a form of error theory, but Timmons thinks this is an illusion resulting from a failure to realize that not all assertions need be descriptive. Some assertions are evaluative assertions distinct from descriptive assertions. As assertions, they express beliefs, but not representational beliefs. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of the meaning and measure of enforceability. While we have long debated what restraints should govern the conduct of our social life, we have paid relatively little attention to the question of what it means to make a restraint enforceable. Focusing on the enforceability of legal rights but also addressing the enforceability of moral rights and social conventions, Mark Reiff explains how we use punishment and compensation to make restraints operative in the (...) world. After describing the various means by which restraints may be enforced, Reiff explains how the sufficiency of enforcement can be measured, and he presents a unified theory of deterrence, retribution, and compensation that shows how these aspects of enforceability are interconnected. Reiff then applies his theory of enforceability to illuminate a variety of real-world problem situations. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that John Rawls’s account of political liberalism requires a conception of mutual respect that differs from the one advanced in A Theory of Justice. We formulate such a political liberal form of mutual respect, which we call ‘civic respect.’ We also maintain that core features of political liberalism – in particular, the ideas of ‘the burdens of judgment’ and ‘public reason’ – do not commit political liberalism to an ideal of personal autonomy, contrary to claims (...) made by various commentators. Furthermore, we maintain that teaching the idea of ‘public reason’ to students in civic education courses does not threaten their ‘ethical integrity.’ On the basis of these points, we maintain – against political and educational theorists like Eamonn Callan and Amy Gutmann – that political liberalism permits a wider range of educational policy options, including some ‘school choice’ policies, than most forms of comprehensive liberalism. We conclude the article by considering some such policies. (shrink)

During a period of great religious upheaval Anglican philosopher and ecclesiastic Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871) became famous for his 1858 Bampton Lectures, which sought to defend traditional faith by employing a skeptical philosophy. Understanding Mansel and the passionate debate that surrounded his career provides insight into the current struggle for ancient religions to articulate their traditions in a modern world. In Scripture, Skepticism, and the Character of God Dane Neufeld explores the life and thought of the now forgotten nineteenth-century (...) theologian. Examining the ideological differences between this philosopher and his contemporaries, Neufeld makes a case for the coherence of Mansel's position and traces the vestiges of his thought through the generations that followed him. Mansel found himself at the centre of an explosive debate in the church, concerning the Christian scriptures and the moral character of the God they described. Though the rise of science is often credited with provoking a crisis of doubt in the nineteenth century, shifting ideas about humanity and God were just as central to the spiritual unrest of the era. Mansel's central argument, that the entire Bible must be read as a unified witness to the reality of God, provoked disagreement among theologians, churchmen, and free thinkers alike who were uncomfortable with certain aspects of the scriptural portrayal of God's activity and character. Mansel's attempt to reconcile theological skepticism with scripturalism was misunderstood. He was branded a hopeless fideist by the free thinkers and a dangerous skeptic by high, broad, and evangelical churchmen alike. Many of the controversies in contemporary Christianity concern the collision between modern morality and biblical renderings of God. Neufeld argues that Henry Mansel, while a deeply polarizing figure, brought clarity and precision to this debate by exposing what was at stake for Christian belief and biblical interpretation in the Victorian period. (shrink)

Showing remarkable insight into the relationship between language and thought, Alan Turing in 1950 proposed the Imitation Game as a proxy for the question “Can machines think?” and its meaning and practicality have been debated hotly ever since. The Imitation Game has come under criticism within the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence communities with leading scientists proposing alternatives, revisions, or even that the Game be abandoned entirely. Yet Turing’s imagined conversational fragments between human and machine are rich with complex instances (...) of inference of implied information, reasoning from generalizations, and meta-reasoning, challenges AI practitioners have wrestled with since at least 1980 and continue to study. We argue that the very fact the Imitation Game is so difficult may be the very reason it shouldn’t be changed or abandoned. The semi-decidability of the game at this point hints at the possibility of a hard limit to the powers of technology. (shrink)

In nearly forty years’ of work, Simon Blackburn has done more than anyone to expand our imaginations about the aspirations for broadly projectivist/expressivist theorizing in all areas of philosophy. I know that I am far from alone in that his work has often been a source of both inspiration and provocation for my own work. It might be tempting, in a volume of critical essays such as this, to pay tribute to Blackburn’s special talent for destructive polemic, by seeking to (...) take down that by which I’ve been most provoked over the years. But Blackburn’s biting wit has both more wit and more bite than I could hope to emulate. So instead I’ll try to emulate here what I’ve admired the most about Blackburn – the constructive vein of much of his work. (shrink)

We formulate a distinctly 'political liberal' conception of mutual respect, which we call 'civic respect', appropriate for governing the public political relations of citizens in pluralist democratic societies. A political liberal account of education should aim at ensuring that students, as future citizens, learn to interact with other citizens on the basis of civic respect. While children should be required to attend educational institutions that will inculcate in them the skills and concepts necessary for them to be free and equal (...) citizens, parents should be granted as much freedom as is compatible with the requirements of civic respect to raise their children in accordance with their respective 'comprehensive doctrines' (systems of beliefs and values, including religious doctrines). We consider an objection to our position drawn from the account of upbringing recently advanced by Matthew Clayton, namely, that the conception of civic respect that we advance rests on an implausible view about the limited scope of the requirements of political justice. We develop an account of the 'basic structure of society' as the appropriate subject of political justice that can overcome this objection. (shrink)

According to Philip Pettit, we should understand republican liberty, freedom as ‘non-domination,’ as a ‘supreme political value.’ It is its commitment to freedom as non-domination, Pettit claims, that distinguishes republicanism from various forms of liberal egalitarianism, including the political liberalism of John Rawls. I explain that Rawlsian political liberalism is committed to a form of non-domination, namely, a ‘political’ conception, which is: (a) limited in its scope to the ‘basic structure of society,’ and (b) ‘freestanding’ in nature (that is, compatible (...) with the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’). I show that the political conception of non-domination is an integral part of political liberalism through an exploration of the kind of citizenship education that political liberalism mandates for all students. Such an education would impart to future citizen the skills and knowledge necessary for them to realize republican freedom vis-à-vis their political institutions, their workplaces, and, by means of an enforceable ‘right of exit,’ the various associations to which they might belong. (shrink)

Global health research partnerships have many benefits, including the development of research capacity and improving the production and use of evidence to improve global health equity. These partnerships also include many challenges, with power and resource differences often leading to inequitable and unethical partnership dynamics. Responding to these challenges and to important gaps in partnership scholarship, the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research conducted a three-year, multi-regional consultation to capture the research partnership experiences of stakeholders in South Asia, Latin America, (...) and sub-Saharan Africa. The consultation participants described persistent inequities in the conduct of global health research partnerships and called for a mechanism through which to improve accountability for ethical conduct within partnerships. They also called for a commitment by the global health research community to research partnership ethics. The Partnership Assessment Toolkit is a practical tool that enables partners to openly discuss the ethics of their partnership and to put in place structures that create ethical accountability. Clear mechanisms such as the PAT are essential to guide ethical conduct to ensure that global health research partnerships are beneficial to all collaborators, that they reflect the values of the global health endeavor more broadly, and that they ultimately lead to improvements in health outcomes and health equity. (shrink)

Emerging research shows that undergraduate students are searching for a deeper meaning in their lives from their university studies. Leading students forth into this kind of meaningful action is the primary responsibility of the Philosopher of Education. This paper describes how such meaningful action can be accomplished by integrating the pedagogical ontology of Martin Heidegger into a course in the history and philosophy of Education. The course challenges students to engage in the cooperative project of what John Sallis calls “world (...) building” by posing strategic questions, designing appropriate content, and demonstrating artful signs. Heidegger expects his students to rethink what it means for them to be a human being. When this identity is transformed, a new calling to think and an invocation to teach that calling can flow from that instruction. This paper describes this kind of instruction in practice by specifically characterizing what a “professor of learning to think” would be. (shrink)

Citizens are politically autonomous insofar as they are subject to laws that are (a) justified by reasons acceptable to them and (b) authorized by them via their political institutions. An obstacle to the equal realization of political autonomy is the plurality of religious, moral, and philosophical views endorsed by citizens. Decisions regarding certain fundamental political issues (e.g., abortion) can involve citizens imposing political positions justified in terms of their respective worldviews upon others. Despite citizens’ disagreements over which worldview is correct, (...) ‘political liberalism’ claims that there is a form of political autonomy that is realizable within pluralist societies. (Political liberalism differs from ‘comprehensive liberalism’ by, inter alia, being ‘freestanding’ vis-à-vis citizens’ different worldviews.) Citizens can be politically autonomous if they enjoy equal political power and justify its exercise with ‘public reasons.’ A political liberal education would aim at ensuring that all students can become politically autonomous citizens by teaching them how to exercise their democratic rights effectively and how to engage in public reasoning. Some political and educational theorists, however, argue that teaching students how to be politically autonomous amounts to teaching them how to be ‘comprehensively’ autonomous. If this is so, then the distinction between political liberalism and comprehensive liberalism collapses, at least with respect to education. This chapter outlines the main elements of political liberalism, summarizes the main requirements of a political liberal citizenship education, and surveys three arguments in support of and against the thesis that a political liberal education amounts to an education for comprehensive autonomy. (shrink)

Philosophers of music commonly distinguish performative from critical interpretations. I would like to suggest that the distinction between critical and performative interpretations is well captured by an analogy to legal critics and judges. This parallel draws attention to several features of performative interpretation that are typically overlooked, and deemphasizes epistemic problems with performative interpretations that I believe are typically blown out of proportion and ultimately fail to capture interesting features of performative interpretation. There is an important distinction to be made (...) between critical and performative interpretation, but its source lies in a difference between the authority of critical and performative interpretations. (shrink)

In The Law of Peoples Rawls claims that liberal well-ordered societies (LWOSs) should regard certain non-liberal societies, decent hierarchical societies (DHSs), as equal members of a just international order, a ‘Society of Peoples.’ Rawls maintains, however, that while the ‘basic structures’ (the main political and economic institutions) of LWOSs are fair systems of social cooperation, the basic structures of DHSs are only ‘decent’ systems of social cooperation. I explain why the basic structures of DHSs cannot be fair systems of social (...) cooperation. In doing so, I refute a recent defense of DHSs advanced by Samuel Freeman. I then argue that because the basic structures of DHSs cannot be fair systems of social cooperation, Rawls is not justified in holding that LWOSs should refrain always from offering economic incentives to DHSs in order to encourage them to liberalize their political institutions. The ultimate aim of the foreign policies of LWOSs should be a world in which liberal democratic rights are respected by all societies. (shrink)

In Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism, Mark Walker argues for Skeptical-Dogmatism about philosophical views—i.e., he argues that we should disbelieve most philosophical views. Walker argues for Skeptical-Dogmatism over both Dogmatism and Skepticism. In response, I defend Skepticism—i.e., the view that we should neither believe nor disbelieve most philosophical views. I argue that Walker’s arguments overlook some of the most plausible forms of philosophical Skepticism where the Skeptic suspends judgment about most disputed philosophical views without assigning a credence of 0.5 to those (...) views. In doing so, I argue that suspension of judgment is the default justified doxastic attitude—i.e., the doxastic attitude one is epistemically justified in adopting absent any reason to do otherwise. I also champion Skepticism by offering modified versions of some of Walker’s thought experiments, posing challenges for Skeptical-Dogmatism, and arguing that Skepticism and Skeptical-Dogmatism share some common benefits. (shrink)

For more than a quarter of a century, Hubert L. Dreyfus has been the leading voice in American philosophy for the continuing relevance of phenomenology, particularly as developed by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Dreyfus has influenced a generation of students and a wide range of colleagues, and these volumes are an excellent representation of the extent and depth of that influence.In keeping with Dreyfus's openness to others' ideas, many of the essays in this volume take the form (...) of arguments with various of his positions. The essays focus on the dialogue with the continental philosophical tradition, in particular the work of Heidegger, that has played a foundational role in Dreyfus's thinking. The sections are Philosophy and Authenticity; Modernity, Self, and the World; and Heideggerian Encounters. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.Contributors : William D. Blattner, Taylor Carman, David R. Cerbone, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Charles Guignon, Michel Haar, Beatrice Han, Alastair Hannay, John Haugeland, Randall Havas, Jeff Malpas, Mark Okrent, Richard Rorty, Julian Young, Michael E. Zimmerman. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the view that concepts encode causal information and, for the first time, applies this view to a range of topics in the philosophy of language and social philosophy. In my first chapter (“Cognitive Essentialism and the Structure of Concepts”), I survey the current empirical and theoretical literature on causal-essentialist theories of concepts. In my second chapter (“Meaning Externalism and Causal Model Theory”), I propose an account of natural kind concepts according to which they encode statistical information of (...) features of a natural kind, and represents these features as causally related to each other. I show that this internalist model of concepts correctly predicts intuitions about Putnam’s twin earth scenario and Kripke’s conceivability cases that historically motivated philosophers of language to accept externalist accounts of meaning. The defended theory of concepts also informs topics that go beyond traditional issues in philosophy of language. In my third chapter (“An Essentialist Theory of the Meaning of Slurs”), I defend the view that slurs are, too, a species of kind terms: slur concepts encode mini-theories which represent an essence-like element that is causally connected to a set of negatively-valenced stereotypical features of a social group. This explains both the peculiar linguistic behavior of slurs and slurs’ dehumanizing effects. In my fourth chapter, I build on this insight, showing that the explicit language in and around pornography depicts women as ‘kinds’ or ‘breeds’ that are naturally made to enjoy certain sexual acts, and argue that this deterministic picture of women dehumanizes them. (shrink)

Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.

Weak emergence is the view that a system’s macro properties can be explained by its micro properties but only in an especially complicated way. This paper explains a version of weak emergence based on the notion of explanatory incompressibility and “crawling the causal web.” Then it examines three reasons why weak emergence might be thought to be just in the mind. The first reason is based on contrasting mere epistemological emergence with a form of ontological emergence that involves irreducible downward (...) causation. The second reason is based on the idea that attributions of emergence are always a reflection of our ignorance of non-emergent explanations. The third reason is based on the charge that complex explanations are anthropocentric. Rather than being just in the mind, weak emergence is seen to involve a distinctive kind of complex, macro-pattern in the mind-independent objective micro-causal structure that exists in nature. The paper ends by addressing two further questions. One concerns whether weak emergence applies only or mainly to computer simulations and computational systems. The other concerns the respect in which weak emergence is dynamic rather than static. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that there is a blanket norm requiring the performer to present the work “in the best light possible,” and that the performer “make the ends of the work his own” or “live the work” in performance. Through careful consideration of a particular performance, I suggest that this is an inadequate conception of a performer’s obligations. I argue that the form of identification between performer and work commonly propounded by philosophers, musicologists, music teachers, and performers alike is (...) illuminated by what I take to be an exemplary metaphor deployed by Roger Scruton: the life in music. The problems with requiring a performer to identify with and affirm a work are made vivid by careful consideration of the requirements of “living the work,” or understanding the “life in tones.” I argue that this call for identification and affirmation ultimately denies the performer the capacity for critical interpretation and amounts either to a denial of modernity or to a desire to step behind it. (shrink)

Abstract:Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research.The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real (...) task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others. (shrink)

A group of theologians collaborated to publish a commentary on the Encyclical letter Haurietis Aquas. Among these were brothers Hugo and Karl Rahner. Their contribution is a theological reflection on the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an example of a rich connection between spiritual reality and theological thought before the Second Vatican Council. In this case we see a remote theological preparation of the Council and an important theological work which was later developed by the Council itself. All (...) this was happening around the time when the Institute of Spirituality at the Gregorian University was founded. (shrink)

An ecological niche framework ( Hacking, 1998 ) is utilised to examine the growth of ADHD in North America. The analysis suggests ADHD flourishes, at least in part, due to a complex and historicall...