Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a "what next?" question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and (...) unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action. Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts relational quantum mechanics with a pragmatist view of quantum theory. I first explain important points of agreement. Then I point to two problems faced by RQM and sketch DP?s solutions to analogous problems. Since both RQM and DP have taken the Born rule to require relative facts I next say what these might be. My main objection to RQM as originally conceived is that its ontology of relative facts is incompatible with scientific objectivity and undercuts (...) the evidential base of quantum theory. In contrast DP?s relative facts have all the objectivity we need to accept quantum theory as scientific knowledge. But a very recent modification to RQM has successfully addressed my main objection,bringing the two views into even closer alignment. (shrink)

The more than 40 readings in this anthology cover the most important developments of the past six decades, charting the rise and decline of logical positivism ...

In the absence of empirical confirmation, scientists may judge a theory's chances of being viable based on a wide range of arguments. The paper argues that such arguments can differ substantially with regard to their structural similarly to empirical confirmation. Arguments that resemble empirical confirmation in a number of crucial respects provide a better basis for reliable judgement and can, in a Bayesian sense, amount to significant \textit{non-empirical} confirmation. It is shown that three kinds of non-empirical confirmation that have been (...) specified in earlier work do satisfy those conditions. (shrink)

The concept of self-control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization. The individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer. The resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm. Both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create. This paper stresses the implications (...) of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving, saving and the timing of income flows, and individual discount rates. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to identify the wrong that is done in all cases of testimonial injustice, if there is one. Miranda Fricker (2007) proposes one account of this distinctive wrong, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. (2014) offers another. I think neither works. Nor does an account based on giving due respect to the testifier's epistemic competence. Nor does an account based on exposing the testifier to substantial risk of harm. Rachel Fraser (2023) describes a further account, and the (...) proposal I favour is a slight amendment of this. (shrink)

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner’s psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach’s engagement (...) with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach’s study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach’s emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach – building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome. (shrink)

In this essay Rorty argues that care or concern alone is inadequate for dealing with problems of Third World poverty; neither is there likely to be a convenient technological fix. There is no evading the hard decisions that global poverty will require of the rich nations, and there is no way past E. M. Forster’s dictum, in Howard’s End, that “We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician or the (...) poet.” Most of Rorty’s essay focuses on works of Forster demonstrating that, in Rorty’s words, “tenderness only appears... when there is enough money to produce a little leisure, a little time in which to love.... The cash value of the Christian ideal of universal brotherhood has, for the last two centuries, been the conviction that once science and technology have produced enough wealth—and enlightened, unselfish political initiatives have redistributed it—there will be no one left who is incapable of tenderness. All human beings will live in the light; all of them will be possible characters in novels.”. (shrink)

What is strange? Or better, who is strange? When do we encounter the strange? We encounter strangers when we are not at home: when we are in a foreign land or a foreign part of our own land. From Freud to Lacan to Kristeva to Heidegger, the feeling of strangeness--das Unheimlichkeit--has marked our encounter with the other, even the other within our self. Most philosophical attempts to understand the role of the Stranger, human or transcendent, have been limited to standard (...) epistemological problems of other minds, metaphysical substances, body/soul dualism and related issues of consciousness and cognition. This volume endeavors to take the question of hosting the stranger to the deeper level of embodied imagination and the senses. This volume plays host to a number of encounters with the strange. It asks such questions as: How does the embodied imagination relate to the Stranger in terms of hospitality or hostility? How do we distinguish between projections of fear or fascination, leading to either violence or welcome? How do humans "sense" the dimension of the strange and alien in different religions, arts, and cultures? How do the five physical senses relate to the spiritual senses, especially the famous "sixth" sense, as portals to an encounter with the Other? Is there a carnal perception of alterity, which would operate at an affective, prereflective, preconscious level? What exactly do "embodied imaginaries" of hospitality and hostility entail, and how do they operate in language, psychology, and social interrelations? And what, finally, are the topical implications of these questions for an ethics and practice of tolerance and peace? (shrink)

McCarthy thinks truth more important than I do. Specifically, he thinks that “ ‘truth’ … functions as an ‘idea of reason’ with respect to which we can criticize not only particular claims within our language but the very standards of truth we have inherited” . By contrast, I think that what enables us to make such criticism is concrete alternative suggestions—suggestions about how to redescribe what we are talking about. Some examples are Galileo’s suggestions about how to redescribe the Aristotelian (...) universe, Marx’s suggestions about how to redescribe the nineteenth century, Heidegger’s suggestions about how to redescribe the West as a whole, Dickens’s suggestions about how to redescribe chancery law, Rabelais’s suggestions about how to redescriibe monasteries, and Virginia Woolf’s suggestions about how to redescribe women writing.Such fresh descriptions, such new suggestions of things to say, sentences to consider, vocabularies to employ, are what do the work. All that the idea of truth does is to say, “Bethink yourself that you might be mistaken; remember that your beliefs may be justified by your other belies in the area, but that the whole kit and caboodle might be misguided, and in particular that you might be using the wrong words for your purpose.” But this admonition is empty and powerless without some concrete suggestion of an alternative set of beliefs, or of words. Moreover, if you have such a suggestion, you do not need the admonition. The only cash value of this regulative idea is to commend fallibilism, to remind us that lots of people have been as certain of, and as justified in believing, things that turned out to be false as we are certain of, and justified in holding, our present views. It is not, as McCarthy says, a “moment of unconditionality that opens us up to criticism from other points of view” . It is the particular attractions of those other points of view.Richard Rorty is University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this updated and revised version of his 2008 Society for Business Ethics presidential address, Richard Nielsen documents the characteristics and extent of the 2007–2009 economic crisis and analyzes how the ethics issues of the economic crisis are structurally related to a relatively new form of capitalism, high-leverage finance capitalism. Four types of high-leverage finance capitalism are considered: hedge funds; private equity-leveraged buyouts; high-leverage, subprime mortgage banking; and high-leverage banking. The structurally related problems with the four types of high-leverage (...) finance capitalism converged in something of a perfect economic storm. Explanations for the crisis are offered in the context of the type of the high-leverage finance capitalism system that permitted and facilitated the economic crisis. Ethics issues and potential reforms are considered that may be able to mitigate the destructive effects of what Schumpeter referred to as the “creative destructive” effects of evolutionary forms of capitalism while realizing the Aristotelian economic ideal of creating wealth in such a way as to make us better people and the world a better place. (shrink)

Slurs are words with a well-known tendency to conjure up painful memories and experiences in members of their target communities. Owing to this tendency, it’s widely agreed that one ought to exercise considerable care when even mentioning a slur, so as to avoid needlessly inflicting distressing associations on members of the relevant group. This paper argues that this tendency to evoke distressing associations is precisely what makes slurs impactful verbal weapons. According to the ballistic theory, slurs make such potent insults (...) because they enable their users to maliciously inflict noxious associations on members of their target groups. To motivate this theory, I demonstrate its ability to explain a number of facts about slurs’ offensiveness that pose formidable difficulties for competing theories of slurs. I argue that the ballistic theory not only explains why slurs make such explosively impactful terms of abuse, but also why: uses of slurs can provoke offense even when they aren’t interpreted as expressions of the speaker’s racist attitudes; and why mentions of slurs are inoffensive in some contexts, but in other contexts, warrant a level of offense every bit as severe as that warranted by weaponized uses. I conclude with a brief discussion of a practical application of the ballistic theory. I demonstrate that the theory has an important consequence for legislative efforts to regulate and punish weaponized uses of slurs. (shrink)

This book tells the story of critical theory's introduction into the study of international relations.

The Philosophical Imagination is a collection of essays ranging over a wide range of philosophical themes: from the emotional engagement with fictions, to the functioning of metaphor in poetry and in rhetoric, to the concept of beauty in Kant and in Proust, and the nature of the first-person perspective in thought and action.

Although the past plays a large part in election campaigns, predictions and promises are its lifeblood, with the various parties promising great things if elected and predicting doom if not. Indeed the `manifestos' usually published at the beginning of an election campaign are a study in pledges, promises and wishes that parties use to entice the electorate to vote for them. Whilst talk of the future often dominates election discourse, one aspect of the future that is largely passed over without (...) comment is the actual make up of the result, despite the relentless publication of opinion polls results. However, towards the end of the general election campaign in the UK in 2001, the Conservative Party began to warn of the dangers of the Labour Party winning the election by a large majority. The media gave wide prominence to this event, seen as tantamount to conceding defeat to the Labour Party, though the reaction of all the main political parties was to downplay its significance. In this article, we explore the discursive manipulation of temporal relations in the 2001 election campaign, and the politicians' work in gaining political capital out of the Conservative Party `breach' in the routine election prediction structure. (shrink)

RICHARD RORTY has written one of the most important and challenging books to be published by an American philosopher in the past few decades. Some will find it a deeply disturbing book while others will find it liberating and exhilarating—both, as we shall see, may be right and wrong. Not since James and Dewey have we had such a devastating critique of professional philosophy. But unlike James and Dewey, who thought that once the sterility and artificiality of professional—and indeed (...) much of modern philosophy since Descartes—had been exposed, there was an important job for philosophers to do; Rorty leaves us in a much more ambiguous and unsettled state. I will examine Rorty’s book from a variety of perspectives, beginning with a general overview and then moving to more finely meshed descriptions. My aim is not only to illuminate the power and subtlety of Rorty’s analysis and to show its inner unity, but to locate basic issues that are left unresolved. (shrink)

It might be that intuitions are central to philosophy, and it might be that this is true because when philosophers give case‐based arguments for philosophical claims (in published philosophy), the case verdict is typically (a) an intuited proposition and (b) either left undefended or defended on the grounds that it is an intuited proposition. This paper remains neutral on these global issues, however, and instead focuses on whether there is a nontrivial (or many‐membered) class of case‐based arguments in philosophy in (...) which the case verdict is defended by appeal to background beliefs and not on the grounds that it is an intuited proposition. The paper argues that the answer is affirmative by examining seven such arguments that are referred to as “paradigm cases” of case‐based arguments in which the verdict is justified via an appeal to intuition. (shrink)

Cosmopolitan theory suggests that we should shift our moral attention from the local to the global. Richard Vernon argues, however, that if we adopt cosmopolitan beliefs about justice we must re-examine our beliefs about political obligation. Far from undermining the demands of citizenship, cosmopolitanism implies more demanding political obligations than theories of the state have traditionally recognized. Using examples including humanitarian intervention, international criminal law, and international political economy, Vernon suggests we have a responsibility not to enhance risks facing (...) other societies and to assist them when their own risk-taking has failed. The central arguments in Cosmopolitan Regard are that what we owe to other societies rests on the same basis as what we owe to our own, and that a theory of cosmopolitanism must connect the responsibilities of citizens beyond their own borders with their obligations to one another"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Roberta Dreon - Richard Shusterman is one of the leading figures in the current field of pragmatist aesthetics and he has undoubtedly played a pivotal role in recovering a pragmatist approach to aesthetics. His book Pragmatist Aesthetics was simultaneously published in France under the title L’Art à l’état vif. La pensée pragmatiste et l’esthétique populaire in 1992, paving the way for a long awaited French translation of Dewey’s Art as Experience (Dewey 1989) in 2010 (Dewey 2005/2010), beaut...

The paper examines whether Gorgias’ On What Is Not should be considered an instance of skepticism. It begins with an analysis of the work as reported by the two sources, Sextus Empiricus and the anonymous author of On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias. It is then argued that the Pyrrhonian skeptics did not regard On What Is Not as skeptical. Nonetheless, it is possible to read the work as offering counter-arguments to Parmenides, with a view to inducing suspension of judgment in (...) Pyrrhonian fashion. However, it is also possible to regard it as skeptical in a sense current in modern philosophy: that is, as posing challenges to our understanding of things with a view to forcing philosophers to come up with better theories. In this light, it can be seen as an important stimulus to the philosophical breakthroughs apparent in Plato’s Sophist. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article looks at several sections of Minima Moralia where Adorno talks explicitly about the need for genuine thinking and what that might consist in. First, I argue that Hegel and Nietzsche are the two guiding thinkers behind this work, and I show how they express two opposing tendencies of thinking—aphoristic and dialectical—that can inspire and enhance each other. Then, in the main part of the article, I identify four significant claims in Adorno’s critical reflections on thinking: (1) that (...) thinking is the enemy of common sense; (2) that thinking is not the same thing as problem-solving; (3) that thinking is not inherently linear in nature; and (4) that thinking involves lingering with the particular or allowing the other to be. I conclude that Adorno’s reflection on the difficulty of thinking in modern life is a key to his account of philosophy in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Reasoning can promote psychological development, so even if the role of philosophical counselor is defined strictly in terms of assisting the reasoning of the client, we can expect client-centered philosophical inquiry to yield psychological benefits. The practices of philosophical counseling and psychotherapy permeate one another to some degree while also diverging in characteristic focus. Philosophical counselors are particularly well suited to helping clients think through their situation in the world.

The Argument of the "Tractatus" presents a single unified interpretation of the Tractatus based on Wittgenstein's own view that the philosophy of logic is the real foundation of his philosophical system.

First published in 1970, original blurb: 'Alienation' is the catchword of our time. It has been applied to everything from the new politics to the anti-heroes of today's films. But what does it meanto say that someone is alienated? Is alienation a state of mind, or a relationship? If modern man is indeed alienated, is it from his work, his government, his society, or himself - or from all of these? Richard Schacht, in this intelligent analysis, gets to the (...) root of these questions. Examining the concept of alienation in the works of Hegel and Marx, he gives a clear account of the origins of the modern usage of the term. Among the many insights to be gained from this analysis is a clear understanding of Hegel's influence on Marx in this most crucial area. Mr Schacht goes on to discuss the concept of alienation in recent philosophical and sociological literature, particularly in the writings of Erich Fromm. Here he finds a great deal of confusion, which has resulted in a series of almost universally unquestioned misconceptions. This, then, is a book for all of us who use - and mis-use - the term 'alienation', and who are interested in the concepts it brings to mind. The arguments of Professor Walter Kaufmann's introductory essay provide a useful background for Mr Schacht's analysis. In this essay, Professor Kaufmann states that 'henceforth nobody should write about alienation without first reading Schacht's book.'. (shrink)

This special issue of Human Nature presents selected works from the 2015 and 2017 “Warfare, Environment, Social Inequality, and Pro-Sociability” conferences held at the Center for Cross-Cultural Study in Seville, Spain. These investigations explore the manifestations of indigenous warfare and violence from a host of theoretical perspectives. Topics range from the origins of warfare to the psychological repercussions of combat, the relationship between warfare and status, as well as the documentation of peace processes among warring groups. This issue also examines (...) the effects of militarization and coercive conservation on indigenous peoples. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which Janelle Monáe’s audiovisual performances leverage black female flesh to trouble historically constituted imaginings of ‘the human’. Tracking Monáe’s audiovisual aesthetics across ‘Many moons’ and Dirty Computer, I interrogate acoustic and imagistic resonances that recall the repeating horrors of bondage, and which also constitute performative ‘fabulations’ whereby freedoms that are engendered specifically by and within black female flesh might be imagined. Monáe ‘enfleshes’ the cyborg to critique cyberfeminist and posthumanist theories that advocate for material (...) dissolution as a framework for liberation, as well as to trouble black women’s historical relationships to the category ‘human’. Rather than understand Dirty Computer as a (re)turn to the human Monáe, I contend that the project extends the artist’s longstanding critical engagement with the black female cyborg and black sonic cyberfeminist liberatory potentialities. (shrink)

Despite major changes in the governance of universities overtly intended to transform them into authoritatively integrated collectivities, the extent of their organisational actorhood remains quite limited and varied between OECD countries. This is because of inherent limitations to the managerial direction and control of research and teaching activities in public science systems as well as considerable variations in how governance changes are being implemented in different kinds of states. Four ideal types of university can be distinguished in terms of their (...) strategic and operational autonomy and capability: Hollow, State-contracted, State-chartered and Private-portfolio. These become established under different proximate and background conditions such that relatively high levels of organisational actorhood are unlikely to be achieved in many OECD countries without major shifts in state structures and policies. (shrink)

Music is fundamental to human existence, a cultural universal among all humans for all times. It is embedded in our evolution, encoded in our DNA, which is to say, essential to our survival. Academics in a variety of disciplines have considered this idea to devise explanations that Richard Manning, a lifelong journalist, finds hollow, arcane, incomplete, ivory-towered, and just plain wrong. He approaches the question from a wholly different angle, using his own guitar and banjo as instruments of discovery. (...) In the process, he finds himself dancing in celebration of music rough and rowdy. American roots music is not a product of an elite leisure class, as some academics contend, but of explosive creativity among slaves, hillbillies, fieldhands, drunks, slackers, and hucksters. Yet these people-poor, working people-built the foundations of jazz, gospel, blues, bluegrass, rock 'n' roll, and country music, an unparalleled burst of invention. This is the counterfactual to the academics' story. This is what tells us music is essential, but by pulling this thread, Manning takes us down a long, strange path, following music to deeper understandings of racism, slavery, inequality, meditation, addiction, the science of our brains, and ultimately to an enticing glimpse of pure religion. Use this book to follow where his guitar leads. Ultimately it sings the American body, electric. (shrink)