How to derive moral values from scientific principles. Examines the limites of social responsibility andthe implications of genetic social policies.

Clinical trials for acute conditions such as myocardial infarction and stroke pose challenges related to informed consent due to time limitations, stress, and severe illness. Consent processes shou...

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W12-W13.

Research has demonstrated that people readily pay more attention to negative than to positive and/or neutral stimuli. However, evidence from recent studies indicated that such an attention bias to negative information is not obligatory but sensitive to various factors. Two experiments using intergroup evaluative tasks (Study 1: a gender-related groups evaluative task and Study 2: a minimal-related groups evaluative task) was conducted to determine whether motivation to strive for a positive social identity - a part of one's self-concept - drives (...) attention toward affective stimuli. Using the P1 component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a neural index of attention, we confirmed that attention bias toward negative stimuli is not mandatory but it can depend on a motivational focus on affective outcomes. Results showed that social identity-based motivation is likely to bias attention toward affectively incongruent information. Thereby, early onset processes - reflected by the P1 component - appeared susceptible to top-down attentional influences induced by the individual's motivation to strive for a positive social identity. (shrink)

L'influence de John Courtney Murray sur le développement - enchâssé dans Dignitatis Humanae- de l'enseignement de l'Église sur la liberté religieuse est largement connu. L'article montre que le caractère définitif de la contribution de Murray provient de deux perspectives centrales, l'une et l'autre issues des écrits de Bernard Lonergan. Tout d'abord, l'appropriation par Murray de la notion du «surgissement historique de la conscience» - que l'on ne conçoit pas simplement comme une attention aux événements et aux contextes historiques, mais (...) aussi à une «différenciation» propre de la conscience personnelle, sociale et ecclésiale - offre une clé de solution pour résoudre l'impasse créée par les vues conflictuelles, lors du Concile, sur la liberté religieuse. L'étude historique et théologique approfondie de Murray -avant, pendant et après le Concile - sur les thématiques qui touchent la question de la liberté religieuse est ensuite présentée comme une expression concrètement à l'oeuvre des «huit spécialités fonctionnelles» décrites par Méthode en théologie , lesquelles fondent la doctrine des Pères conciliaires pour lesquels un développement de l'enseignement social et moral de l'Église est nécessaire. (shrink)

This book pays tribute to Bernard of Chartes’s observation, “We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” For Hauser’s translation of the texts of Philip the Chancellor, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, along with his introduction to the same, reveals that, if there is any truth in the claim that the medieval thinkers lacked a sense of history, their commitment to the preservation and transmission of texts nevertheless shows that they understood that their own intellectual progress (...) depended on maintaining continuity with the thought of their predecessors. Hauser writes that his original intention was simply to translate Aquinas’s Quaestio disputata de virtutibus in communi, but that in the course of translating, he discovered that, contrary to widespread opinion, Albert the Great had influenced Aquinas’s thinking on the virtues more than did Aristotle. (shrink)

Il ne va pas de soi que l’alchimie, science du perfectionnement des métaux, se soit intéressée à la prolongation de la vie. C’est en fait à la faveur des ambiguïtés lexicales et conceptuelles liées aux termes désignant les substances chimiques que s’est effectué dans l’alchimie arabe un rapprochement entre la perfection des métaux et la guérison des êtres vivants. La doctrine de la quintessence de Rupescissa, puis les théories de Paracelse achèveront cette évolution qui donne à l’alchimie sa double dimension, (...) chimique et médicale, rationnelle et mythique. (shrink)

This essay argues that realism in ethics and in politics is best understood as a discipline of mind directed against wishful thinking. Reading Geuss in this context, against the background of the work of Bernard Williams, allows us to specify what is of value in his work as well as to illustrate the limitations – of argument and of tone – of that work. More specifically, it is argued that while the fairly catholic character of Geuss′s realism is a (...) strength, his critical considerations of theorists such as Rawls and Nozick and concepts such as human rights not only show little intellectual grasp of these positions, but also typically fail to respect his own criteria for understanding and evaluating political theories. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the approach to the study of political and legal phenomena that can be defined “critical realism” and with its apparent paradox. By “critical realism” I understand a way of looking at political and legal phenomena that combines a blunt analysis of social reality with a transformative, non-resigned critical attitude towards the status quo. I argue that this is the approach that inspired Danilo Zolo’s lifelong reflections on politics and law. The same approach, moreover, is in my (...) opinion shared by authors such as Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams, who, since the beginning of the new millennium, have contributed to re-shape the international debate on the methods of political philosophy. Inherent in this approach is a paradox that can be encapsulated in the following two questions. First, if the theoretical analysis should not start from ideals and principles, but must instead take as point of departure the social and political situation in which we are inescapably entangled (both central assumptions of the critical realism), how is it possible to gain the distance necessary for criticisms? Second, if we cannot transcend our societal reality and cannot therefore rely on external and objective values, on which basis is it possible to suggest “better” alternatives to the status quo? The mentioned authors could not explain convincingly, in my opinion, how these two questions can be answered. However, and this is the central claim of the article, the paradox is not unresolvable. The two questions mentioned above can be answered, so my argument, by recurring, respectively, to the negativism characteristic of Judith Shklar’s approach to political and legal theory and to the concept of “immanent critique” as understood by Rahel Jaeggi. Shklar convincingly shows that the critique of the status quo can be made not notwithstanding the blunt analysis of social reality, but exactly in reason of it. In order to recognise abuses of power and injustices, so her argument, we do not need an ideal theory of justice or of the perfect state. On the contrary, nothing better than history and the analysis of contemporary social reality can show us that injustices and abuses of power are a recurring and ever possible characteristics of politics. Jaeggi’s concept on immanent critique, moreover, indicates how it is possible to build an alternative to the criticized situation that is not anchored on transcendent principles and yet can plausibly explain why the suggested alternative is “better” than the status quo. Finally, I argue that both Shklars’ negativism and Jaeggi’s concept of immanent critique operate implicitly in Zolo’s approach, but that they, having not being made explicit, could not develop their whole potential. (shrink)

Political realism has been criticised for its methodological claims about normativity and for its criticisms of moralism. Realists themselves should be more concerned that for all its methodological wrangling, realists have struggled to produce much positive theorising, rendering realism barren. I argue that realism, in both its liberal and radical forms, is currently barren in the sense of being unproductive, and show how the two dominant forms of realism are barren in different ways. Bernard Williams’s liberal realism exclusively derives (...) its normative resources from existing political practices, values, and institutions, which leads it to replicate the status quo and precludes external criticism. Radical realism, represented here by Raymond Geuss, is barren because the fear of succumbing to moralism or ‘normativism’ leads radical realists to wrongly abjure normativity altogether. Having shown that both forms of realism are barren I argue that radical realists should adopt a method of political theory as story-telling as a way to avoid both moralism and barrenness. While realists are right to be wary of normative prescription, I argue that realists need to tell a story about which political transformations are desirable and why or else risk succumbing barrenness. I give a brief illustration of story-telling in practice then address some objections to story-telling as a productive method. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. Our focus is a defence of the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to consistently envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem we combine insights from three distant corners of the philosophical landscape: theories of legitimacy by Bernard (...) Williams and other realists, Frankfurt School-inspired Critical Theory, and recent analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology, and social construction. The upshot is a novel account of realism as empirically-informed diagnosis- critique of social and political phenomena. This view rejects a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so is an alternative to the anti- empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise. (shrink)

One of the more debated topics in the recent realist literature concerns the compatibility of realism and utopianism. Perhaps the greatest challenge to utopian political thought comes from Bernard Williams' realism, which argues, among other things, that political values should be subject to what he calls the ‘realism constraint’, which rules out utopian arguments based on values which cannot be offered by the state as unrealistic and therefore inadmissible. This article challenges that conclusion in two ways. First, it argues (...) that the rationale for accepting Williams' original argument for the ‘realism constraint’ fails. Secondly, it argues that there is at least one genuinely political value of liberty available which is both compatible with realism and something that cannot be offered by the state, namely that of the political anarchist. This opens the way for far more ambitious and utopian forms of realist political thought and implies that the arguments of what we call political anarchists must be met by political argumentation, not simply ruled out by methodological stipulation. (shrink)

Political realists like Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss reject political moralism, where ideal ethical theory comes first, then applied principles, and politics is reduced to a kind of applied ethics. While the models of political moralism that Williams criticizes are endorsed by G.A. Cohen and Ronald Dworkin respectively, I argue that this realist case against John Rawls cannot be sustained. In explicating and defending Rawls’s realistically utopian conception of ideal theory I defend a Kantian conception of theory where (...) it is by abstracting from immediate realities that theory is fit to guide practice by providing a framework for political judgment. (shrink)

This article offers a realist interpretation of Tacitus’s analysis of political failure. Tacitus described the early Roman Empire as a balance between the conflicting and irreconcilable values and interests of the emperor, the army, and the senate. For him Stoic-republican morality in itself—without the intervention of a political standard demanding political agency in every circumstance—cannot provide an all-purpose guide to action. He provides a fine-grained analysis of types of political failure, such as failing to act, or to realize one’s limited (...) scope for maneuver, or the inevitability of failure given particular political circumstances. Tacitus also describes Thrasea, a moderate member of the senatorial opposition to Nero, as an exceptionally laudable figure. His preference for moderate politics places Tacitus on the side of contemporary status-quo oriented, liberal, realists (e.g., Bernard Williams), rather than on the side of radical realists (e.g., Raymond Geuss, Enzo Rossi), but the central lesson of his understanding of Roman politics is not so much that political order is fragile as that the cost of political failure can indeed be unbearably high. (shrink)

Ethical concepts are, or purport to be, normative. They make claims on us: they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least when we invoke them, we make claims on one another; but where does their authority over us - or ours over one another - come from? Christine Korsgaard identifies four accounts of the source of normativity that have been advocated by modern moral philosophers: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. She traces their history, showing how (...) each developed in response to the prior one and comparing their early versions with those on the contemporary philosophical scene. Kant's theory that normativity springs from our own autonomy emerges as a synthesis of the other three, and Korsgaard concludes with her own version of the Kantian account. Her discussion is followed by commentary from G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and a reply by Korsgaard. (shrink)

A World Without Why collects essays, of which some are new, others already published, on topics that interest Raymond Geuss, including architecture, theology, Marxism, tragedy, ethics and the unity of academic philosophy as a discipline. A theme running through the essays is a critical, or at least skeptical, stance towards the ‘Enlightenment project’ of explanation and rationalisation, familiar from the Frankfurt School. In Geuss, that stance may in the end express, despite everything, a thwarted Kantian hope: that reason, and (...) it alone, can make things make sense. (shrink)

This book is vigorous in its arguments, displays an impressive historical sweep, and on several occasions gets in the perfect skewering criticism.

Political realists have devoted much effort to clarifying the methodological specificity of realist theorising and defending its consistency as an approach to political reasoning. Yet the question of how to justify the realist approach has not received the same attention. In this article, I offer a prudential justification of political realism. To do so, I first characterise realism as anti-moralism. I then outline three possible arguments for the realist approach by availing myself of recent inquiries into the metatheoretical basis of (...) realism: The metaethical, the ethical and the prudential arguments. I explain that the prudential argument offers the most solid basis for political realism because it relies on the least controversial premises. Still, I delve into the metaethical and ethical arguments for two reasons: The prudential argument takes advantage of the theses defended by the rival arguments and elaborating the other arguments shows the comparative strengths of the prudential argument. (shrink)

Contemporary ‘crisis studies’ seek to advance democracy by emphasizing the threats that technocracy and populism pose to a specific form of it, liberal-democracy. Crisis studies argue that, since the 1970s, technocratic policymaking has deepened economic inequality. This has fostered citizenly anger, which populists exploit. Four well-known iterations of this argument are evaluated using a political realist lens. Political realism emphasizes the historical context of politics, actors’ possible motives, and a normative orientation derived from the political order itself, rather than an (...) external ethico-moral ideal. The realist lens encourages comparison of crisis studies with historical political theory, which situates liberal-democracy within the long-term development of oligarchic systems of authority, and political history, which portrays technocracy as a product of the well-funded reaction to assertions of the democratic impulse that began in the 1970s. Populism is in this view not so much a perversion of liberal-democracy as it is a perhaps unintended consequence of anti-democratic reaction. The crisis studies make this error because based on a moral defence of the justice of the liberal-democratic order. Revealing the democratically unhelpful moralism at the core of crisis studies demonstrates the usefulness of political realism as a form of applied political theory, and not simply theory about theory. (shrink)

This book tries to argue for both of two theses that some have thought are incompatible, one negative, the other positive. To start with the negative thesis, the book opposes the 'normative turn' in political philosophy: the idea that the right approach to politics is to start from thinking abstractly about our own normative views and apply them to judging political structures, decisions, and events. Rather, the book argues, the study of politics should be focused on the historically and sociologically (...) contextualized sphere of real politics. The second, and positive thesis, is that opposition to the 'normative turn' need not mean the end of utopianism, although that utopianism needs to be re-understood. The utopian impulse is not an attempt to describe a perfect society, but an impulse to think the impossible in politics. That is, it is an attempt to articulate deep-seated desires that cannot be realized under current conditions and to imagine how structures and forms of action that now seem invariant can be changed."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This essay engages critically with the recent emergence of "political realism" in political theory (centrally in the work of Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams). While sympathetic to and convinced of the importance of the core of the enterprise which it identifies, the essay is critical of some of the claims made about the independence of politics from morality and the historically contingent character of political values, and suggests that realism may itself succumb to illusion. The final section sketches (...) an account of the nature of evaluative judgment in the study of politics and, in conclusion, defends both the pluralist character of political theory and the pressing importance of the questions that realism raises and that are inadequately attended to by the bulk of post-war political theory. (shrink)

A common trait of all realistic political theories is the rejection of a conception of political theory as applied moral philosophy and an attempt to preserve some form of distinctively political thinking. Yet the reasons for favouring such an account of political theory can vary, a point that has often been overlooked in recent discussions by realism’s friends and critics alike. While a picture of realism as first-and-foremost an attempt to develop a more practical political theory which does not reduce (...) morality to politics is often cited, in this paper we present an alternative understanding in which the motivation to embrace realism is grounded in a set of critiques of or attitudes towards moral philosophy which then feed into a series of political positions. Political realism, on this account, is driven by a set of philosophical concerns about the nature of ethics and the place of ethical thinking in our lives. This impulse is precisely what motivated Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss to their versions of distinctively realist political thought and is important to emphasise because it demonstrates that realism does not set politics against ethics (a misunderstanding typically endorsed by realism’s critics) but is rather an attempt to philosophise about politics without relying on understandings of morality which we have little reason to endorse. (shrink)

Acknowledged as perhaps _the_ masterpiece of materialist criticism in the English language, this omnibus ranges over British literary history from George Eliot to George Orwell to inquire about the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination.

"--Daniel Brudney, University of Chicago "The fund of information Geuss brings into his discussion of the ancients, and the verve and charm with which it is all presented, make the central chapters of this book particularly engaging.

Cognitive theories of metaphor understanding are typically described in terms of the mappings between different kinds of abstract, schematic, disembodied knowledge. My claim in this paper is that part of our ability to make sense of metaphorical language, both individual utterances and extended narratives, resides in the automatic construction of a simulation whereby we imagine performing the bodily actions referred to in the language. Thus, understanding metaphorical expressions like ‘grasp a concept’ or ‘get over’ an emotion involve simulating what it (...) must be like to engage in these specific activities, even though these actions are, strictly speaking, impossible to physically perform. This process of building a simulation, one that is fundamentally embodied in being constrained by past and present bodily experiences, has specific consequences for how verbal metaphors are understood, and how cognitive scientists, more generally, characterize the nature of metaphorical language and thought. (shrink)

Introduction. During the past two decades philosophers of psychology have considered a large variety of computational models for philosophy of mind and more recently for cognitive science. Among the suggested models are computer programs, Turing machines, pushdown automata, linear bounded automata, finite state automata and sequential machines. Many philosophers have found finite state automata models to be the most appealing, for various reasons, although there has been no shortage of defenders of programs and Turing machines. A paper by Arthur Burks (...) convinced me long ago that “all natural human functions” are, or can be fruitfully modeled to be, finite state automata with output. Further work in the field has reinforced this conviction. There is room, however, for the use of any of the above models in philosophy of mind and in the ongoing development of cognitive science. (shrink)

The specification and implementation of computational artefacts occurs throughout the discipline of computer science. Consequently, unpacking its nature should constitute one of the core areas of the philosophy of computer science. This paper presents a conceptual analysis of the central role of specification in the discipline.

Issues of interest, identity and values intertwine in environmental conflicts, creating challenges that cannot generally be overcome using rationalities grounded in generalised argumentation and abstraction. To address the growing need to engage interests and identities along with plural values in the conservation of biodiversity and ecological systems, we introduce the concept of ‘appropriateness of actions’ and ground it in a relational understanding of environmental ethics. A determination of appropriateness for actions comes from combining outputs from value elicitation with those of (...) interest and identity negotiation in ways that are salient to specific people and their relationships to specific places. Drawing on the Blue Mountain Forest Partnership in the Pacific Northwest, we propose factors of success for supporting appropriate actions: 1) understanding context and identifying key stakeholders; 2) surfacing a diversity of interests and building system-level trust; 3) building empathy for different identities grounded in specific places; 4) eliciting diverse values and seeking to understand their links to worldviews and knowledge systems and; 5) seeking out appropriate actions. (shrink)

A stimulating introduction to central issues of political theory, including liberty, rights and the state, and the claims of need and politics.

In a Special Issue of Discourse Studies titled ‘The Epistemics of Epistemics’, contributing authors criticize Heritage’s research on participants’ orientations to, and management of, the distribution of knowledge in conversation. These authors claim that the analytic framework Heritage developed for analyzing epistemic phenomena privileges the analysts’ over the participants’ point of view, and rejects standard methods of conversation analysis ; that and are adopted in developing and defending the use of abstract analytic schemata that offer little purchase on either the (...) specific actions speakers accomplish or the understanding others display of them; and that, by virtue of these deficiencies, claims about the systematic relevance of epistemic phenomena for talk-in-interaction breach long-standing norms regarding the relationship between data analysis and generalizing claims. Using a collection of excerpts bearing on the import of epistemics for action formation and action sequencing, I demonstrate that these claims are patently false and suggest that they reflect the authors’ effort to recast CA as a kind of fundamentalist enterprise. I then consider excerpts from a second collection to illustrate how the form of social organization described by Heritage can be used to explicate other phenomena that depend on systematic alterations to its basic features. In conclusion, I suggest that CA’s success in enhancing our grasp of the organization of talk-in-interaction derives from its unique commitment to both generalization and context specificity, collections and single cases, findings plus a continual openness to the ‘something more’ that each particular case can provide. (shrink)

There need be no incompatibility between utopian thinking and a “realist” political philosophy, if “realism” in political theory means, as it properly should, only the rejection of specific forms of unreflective illusion. Three forms of such illusion – wishful thinking, ideology, and the purportedly self-evident unities that are the targets of Nietzschean genealogy – are briefly discussed. Utopian thinking itself, it is suggested, will benefit from avoidances of these illusions.

Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foundational tenets of conversation-analytic theory and method – including the relationship (...) between position and composition, and the making of collections – as these appear to be primary sources of confusion for many of the contributors to the Lynch et al. Special Issue. We then target some of the specific arguments presented in the Special Issue, including the alleged ‘over-hearer’s’ writing of metrics, the provision of so-called ‘alternative’ analyses and the supposed ‘crafting’ of generalizations in epistemics research. In addition, in light of Lynch’s more general assertion that conversation analysis has recently been experiencing a ‘rapprochement’ with what he disparagingly refers to as the ‘juggernaut’ of linguistics, we discuss the specific expertise that linguists have to offer in analyzing particular sorts of interactional detail. The article as a whole thus illustrates that, rather than being produced ‘at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail’, conversation-analytic findings – including its work in epistemics – are unambiguously anchored in such detail. We conclude by offering our comments as to the link between CA and linguistics more generally, arguing that this relationship has long proven to be – and indeed continues to be – a mutually beneficial one. (shrink)

Philip J. Ivanhoe's richly annotated translation of this classic work is accompanied by his engaging interpretation and commentary, a lucid introduction, and a Language Appendix that compares eight classic translations of the opening passage of the work and invites the reader to consider the principles upon which each was rendered.

This article discusses the significance of historical research in normative political philosophy. Methodologically ahistoricist philosophers argue that historical research has limited relevance to political philosophy as it only serves to validate if a theory is sufficiently historically fact-sensitive. However, this perspective allows for minimal engagement with intellectual history. In contrast, I advocate for a more substantial role of historical research, suggesting that it not only provides evidence to refute political philosophical views but also serves as a source of imaginative resources. (...) I show that thinkers from across the humanities, like R.J. Collingwood, Quentin Skinner, Michel Foucault, Raymond Geuss, David Graeber, and Bernard Williams, have recognised the importance of these imaginative resources in shaping methodological reflections. These thinkers are concerned that limiting the relevance of history to normative theorising exposes ahistoricist thinkers to imaginative failures. I argue that this is best construed as a concern about the epistemic reliability of their evaluative judgments. Imaginative failures can introduce biases that unjustifiably restrict the range of solutions to practical collective problems they contemplate. Historical research serves a normative function that is unavailable to the methodologically ahistoricist approach by preventing such failures. (shrink)

These are the very scholars that were involved in initiating the revolution in personal identity theory.