How do we change the normative landscape by making requests? It will be argued that by making requests we create reasons for action if and only if certain conditions are met. We are able to create reasons if and only if doing so is valuable for the requester, and if they respect the requestee. Respectful requests have a normative force – it will be argued – because it is of instrumental value to us that we all have the normative power (...) of creating reasons by making requests. The normative power has the potential for creating and shaping valuable interactions and relationships for the requester and the requestee. This potential could not be realized if we did not have the normative power of making requests. It will also be shown why this account of the normative force of requests should be preferred to the two alternative accounts of the reason-giving force of requests that have been put forward by James H.P. Lewis and David Enoch. (shrink)

Kinship terminologies are basic cognitive semantic systems that all human societies use for organizing kin relations. Diversity in kinship systems and their categories is substantial, but constrained. Rácz, Passmore, and Jordan explore hypotheses about such constraints from learning theories and social pressures, testing the impact of a community‐size driven learning bottleneck against the social coordination demands of different kinds of marriage and resource systems.

This paper argues that as a name for a speech act, epistemologists typically use ‘testimony’ in a specialist sense that is more or less synonymous with ‘assertion’, but as a name for a distinctive speech act type in ordinary English, ‘testimony’ names a unique confirmative speech act type. Hence, like any good English word, ‘testimony’ has more than one sense. The paper then addresses the use of ‘testimony’ in epistemology to denote a distinctive kind of evidence: testimonial evidence. Standing views (...) of a hearer’s testimonial evidence see it as partly supervening on a speaker’s assertion that P. The paper argues for a broader account that sees a hearer’s testimonial evidence as partly supervening instead on the hearer’s representation as of a speaker meaning that P. This broader account is the comprehension view of testimonial evidence. The upshot is that not all so-called “testimony-based beliefs” are caused by a speaker’s testimony. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the place of Marx's thought within Adorno's writings from his 1931 inaugural lecture to his famous 1962 seminar on Marx. It focuses on three areas: the critique and transformation of philosophy; the sociology of the commodification of art; and the social ontology of the objectivity of illusions, derived from the critique of political economy. Adorno, it argues, ended his academic life significantly more of a Marxist than he had entered it, leaving a legacy that was distinctive both (...) for its dialectical appropriation of Marx's critique – and suspended supersession – of philosophy and for its philosophical interpretation of Marx's critique of political economy. (shrink)

Everyone allows that human and animal minds are distinctively (indeed, massively) different in their manifest effects. Humans have been able to colonize nearly every corner of the planet, from the artic, to deserts, to rainforests (and they did so in the absence of modern technological aids); they live together in large cooperative groups of unrelated individuals; they communicate with one another using the open-ended expressive resources of natural language; they are capable of cultural learning that accumulates over generations to result (...) in science, art, and agriculture; and they are remarkably thoughtful and inventive. There is much less agreement about how these manifest differences should be explained, however. (shrink)

I explore a strand of reception history that follows Rudolf Carnap’s shift from a purely syntactical analysis of constructed languages to his conception of pure semantics. My exploration focuses on Gustav Bergmann’s and Everett Hall’s interpretation of pure semantics, their understanding of what constitutes a ’formal’ investigation of language, and their arguments concerning the relationship between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents. I argue that Bergmann and Hall strongly misread Carnap’s semantic project and, subsequently, their misunderstanding is passed down through colleagues (...) and students. (shrink)

Methodological questions concerning Chomsky’s generative approach to linguistics have been debated without consensus. The status of linguistics as psychology, the psychological reality of grammars, the character of tacit knowledge and the role of intuitions as data remain heatedly disputed today. I argue that the recalcitrance of these disputes is symptomatic of deep misunderstandings. I focus attention on Michael Devitt’s recent extended critique of Chomskyan linguistics and I suggest that his complaints are based on a failure to appreciate the special status (...) of Chomsky’s computational formalisms found elsewhere in cognitive science. Devitt ascribes an intentional conception of representations that Chomsky repudiates and that is independently implausible. I argue that Devitt’s proposed “linguistic reality ” as the proper subject matter of linguistics neglects the problems of tokens as opposed to types and he misses the force of Chomsky’s arguments against Behaviourism and nominalism. I suggest that Devitt’s case against intuitions as data misunderstands their standard role throughout perceptual psychology. Finally, of more general interest, I argue that Devitt’s position exemplifies compelling errors concerning mental representation seen throughout cognitive science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this essay, I claim that certain passages in Book IV of Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics suggest a novel version of what is known as metaethical constructivism. The constructivist interpretation emerges in the course of attempting to resolve a tension between Spinoza’s apparent ethical egoism and some remarks he makes about the efficacy of collaborating with the right partners when attempting to promote our individual self-interest . Though Spinoza maintains that individuals necessarily aim to promote their self-interest, I argue that (...) Spinoza has an atypical conception of self that allows the interests of other people to be partially constitutive of one's own self-interest. In this way, Spinoza can account for the rationality of concern for the interests of others . This interpretation attributes to Spinoza a form of constructivism that differs in important ways from contemporary Humean and Kantian constructivisms and which can in principle be detached from Spinoza’s particular metaphysical commitments in order to yield a third general category of constructivist view . Though my treatment is necessarily brief, it is my hope that it can serve both to motivate a constructivist reading of Spinoza and, perhaps even more crucially, to suggest a Spinozistic variety of constructivism as a live theoretical option in metaethics. (shrink)

The primary aim of this important study is to produce a reliable account of Peter Martyr’s life before he left Italy in 1542. Earlier biographers had been content to follow the Swiss Calvinist Josiah Simler, who knew Peter Martyr in later years, delivered his funeral oration and published it in 1563. Dr McNair has tried ‘to delve beneath Simler to contemporary records’. He has discovered, for example, that Peter Martyr was born in 1499 not, as is usually (...) said, in 1500. He has been concerned to find out when Peter Martyr left his order and his Church, suggesting that there is little reason to believe that his apostasy began in his years at the University of Padua, 1518-26; it was in Naples, between 1537 and 1540, when he came to know Juan de Valdés, that Peter Martyr’s conversion took place. ‘He arrived a reformer after the order of Ximénez, he left a reformer after the order of Zwingli’, writes Dr McNair, meaning by this the Zwingli of the years immediately before 1523, when he wished to go further than Erasmus but not so far as Luther. (shrink)

This article evaluates the scientific credentials of a distinction that is frequently endorsed by scientists who study human reasoning, between so-called “System 1” and “System 2”. The paper argues that one aspect of what is generally intended by this distinction is real. In particular, there is a real distinction between intuitive and reflective cognitive processes. But this distinction fails to line up with many of the other properties attributed to System 1 and System 2. Accordingly, the paper argues that the (...) latter distinction is not real, and should be abandoned. (shrink)

Suppose that time is infinitely long towards the future, and that each feasible action produces a finite amount of utility at each time. Then, under appropriate conditions, each action produces an infinite amount of utility. Does this mean that utilitarianism lacks the resources to discriminate among such actions? Since each action produces the same infinite amount of utility, it seems that utilitarianism must judge all actions permissible, judge all actions impermissible, or remain completely silent. If the future is infinite, that (...) is, the prospects for utilitarianism look bleak. (shrink)

In his short life, Alan Turing (1912-1954) made foundational contributions to philosophy, mathematics, biology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. He, as much as anyone, invented and showed how to program the digital electronic computer. From September, 1939, his work on computation was war-driven and brutally practical. He developed high speed computing devices needed to decipher German Enigma Machine messages to and from U-boats, countering the most serious threat by far to Britain..

In this chapter I assume that we accept, perhaps reluctantly, general facts, that is states of affairs corresponding to universal generalizations. I then argue that, without any addition, this ontology provides us with physical necessities, and moreover with various grades of physical necessity, including the strongest grade, which I call absolute physical necessity. In addition there are consequences for our understanding of time. For this account, which I call the Mortmain Theory, provides a defence of No Futurism against an otherwise (...) serious objection due to David Armstrong. In addition the Mortmain theory enables me to argue against the ‘‘Parmenidean’’ or Block Universe position that future and past are both real. (shrink)

On being told that "translation is an impossible thing," Anatole France replied: "precisely, my friend; the recognition of that truth is a necessary preliminary to success in art." The task of Transplantings is to add flesh and bones to that familiar quip. Indeed, Daniel Weissbort notes that Viereck's study represented a sixty-five year long project. Now, it is finally being brought to print in its full form, with the completion of the final manuscript shortly before Viereck's death. If translation is (...) a special genre in its own right, the translation of poetry, especially from major foreign languages, is a special subset of that genre. What emerges in the imperfect act of translation is an aesthetic dimension that Viereck considers unique in its own right. Transplantings provides new insight into Viereck as a poet of substance, but more than that as a public intellectual. He is critical in probing the work of the major figures such as Stefan George and Georg Heym. To round out this monumental new look at German poetical history, Viereck reviews Goethe, Novalis, and Rilke among others. For Viereck, the difference between the poetical and the political is critical. The quality of poetry is not measured by politics, nor can the worth of political action be defined by commitment to the poetical. The experience of German thought, as well as French and Italian efforts, reveals a divide that can be narrowed but hardly bridged by rhetoric. Transplantings does not simplify the task of the reader. Rather it shows without doubt that the passion of great poetry is part of a national tradition. Efforts at translation indicate how such poetry becomes part of an international culture. This is a major work by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. It merits reading, and then, re-reading. "Peter Viereck was that rare scholar who captured the European experience with America, while fully realizing the American encounter with Europe. He did so with consciousness of and compassion for both sectors of Western Civilization" --Irving Louis Horowitz, Society Peter Viereck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic, and historian. He held the Kenan Chair in History at Mount Holyoke College. He was known as one of America's conservatism's early leaders and was the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships both in history and poetry. (shrink)

In this chapter, Amato explores the concept of “vernacular rationality” introduced by Emmanuel Chukwude Eze in his On Reason: Rationality in a World of Cultural Conflict and Racism. Amato interrogates the different ways this idea can be unfolded, expanded, and developed in the spirit if not the letter of Eze’s employment in relation to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics—in particular, its conception of the role tradition plays in the pursuit of understanding and the idea of hermeneutics as practical philosophy. A more (...) hermeneutical conception of vernacular rationality would have the benefit of embracing the linguisticality of our circumstance, and reorienting our rationality toward one another in conversation and dialogue. From the standpoint of Philosophical Hermeneutics this requires us to engage in a critical-constitutive relation toward our tradition(s), emphasizing the work of listening within and between tradition(s), and broadening the circle of listening so as to strengthen the practical connections that allow conversation and dialogue to overcome the irrational and inhumane. (shrink)

Scheuerman’s book is one of the handful of significant attempts to rethink Schmitt’s work systematically over the past four decades. In so doing, he raises three key questions for me. First, is Schmitt’s work a sincere contribution to legal and political theory, or an attempt to argue for setting the rule of law aside for authoritarianism, that is, an instrumental critique of indeterminacy? Second, to what extent is Schmitt – critical of the ‘bourgeois’ rule of law, critical of globalization – (...) really a thinker defending capitalism? Can he really be associated with the Ordoliberals (even if they adopted his arguments from 1931 to 1932 in their own writing of the time)? Third, to what extent were Schmitt’s early contributions to National Socialist law aimed at responding to legal indeterminacy, and to what extent did they in fact point towards a radicalism of German law within the Nazi system, especially insofar as they endorsed making decisions based on the principles of justice of the Nazi state – and potentially against the express language of statutes? (shrink)

As argumentation theory has moved away from classical logic as a standard, sources have played an increasingly important role in the psychology of argumentation. Considering the connections between arguments and their sources is important for both descriptive and normative projects. This chapter draws together different strands of research in the psychology of argumentation and their differing views on source characteristics: namely, procedural rules, pragmatics, argumentation schemes and Bayesian Argumentation. We argue for a reconciliation of these different approaches around a probabilistic (...) notion of relevance. (shrink)

Welches ist die Bedeutung des Humanismus für die soziologische Erkenntnisbildung? Seit der Entstehung der Soziologie wurde diese Frage immer wieder aufgeworfen – um bald darauf wieder zu verschwinden. Und damit blieb auch der eigentliche Gegenstand dieser Frage bis heute verborgen: die Bestimmung der Kultur der Soziologie. Denn die soziologische Erkenntnisbildung, das Erstehenlassen der Wirklichkeit des menschlichen Zusammenlebens in Begriffen, ist eine „kulturelle Tätigkeit“. Am gegenwärtigen Zustand der Soziologie zeigt sich dieser Mangel besonders deutlich, droht das Streben nach soziologischer Erkenntnis sich (...) doch im Niemandsland zwischen „multiparadigmatischen“ Verlegenheitslösungen, Hyperrealitäten methodischer und statistischer Codes und technokratischem Dienstleistungswissen buchstäblich zu verlieren. – Vor diesem Hintergrund versammelt der Band grundlegende Untersuchungen des Vehältnisses von Humanismus und Soziologie. Dabei kommen so unterschiedliche Strömungen wie die Kritische Theorie, Rational Choice und der Poststrukturalismus, so unterschiedliche Autoren wie Karl Mannheim, Talcott Parsons, Leo Strauss und Alfred Weber zur Sprache. Auf diese Weise ermöglicht der Band einen neuen Blick auf die Soziologie, insbesondere auf deren geisteswissenschaftliche Dimension. (shrink)

The persistence of some central instances of social injustice in European democracies governed by the rule of law; despite abundant resources for durably reducing them, is poorly understood. Understanding better the nature of law as constructive interpretation may strongly motivate future applications of the rule of law to alleviating substantially the social injustice of unnecessary yet continuing destitution among many persons, particularly in affluent and resourceful Paris. However, recent critical examinations of the nature of law as constructive interpretation have uncovered (...) a crucial problem with this otherwise cogent account. Here, I show how some eco-ethical reflection on the nature of aesthetic interpretation may suggest a way for resolving this problem with the nature of jurisprudential interpretation. If correct, a further developed version of this analysis may re-open constructively interpretive ways towards more socially effective means for applying the rule of law to help in the elimination of the persistent social injustice of widespread impoverishment in Paris and in other similarly governed major world cities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Lyotard's first book was an introduction to phenomenology, most of the work that follows can be said to openly challenge the limits of phenomenological analysis. This is particularly...