Ignorance usually excuses from responsibility, unless the person is culpable for the ignorance itself. Since a lot of wrongdoing occurs in ignorance, the question of what makes ignorance culpable is central for a theory of moral responsibility. In this article I examine a prominent answer, which I call the ‘volitionalist tracing account,’ and criticize it on the grounds that it relies on an overly restrictive conception of responsibility‐relevant control. I then propose an alternative, which I call the ‘capacitarian conception of (...) control,’ and on the basis of it I advance an account of culpable ignorance that avoids the skeptical upshots of the volitionalist proposal. If correct, my account establishes three important truths: agents can be directly in control of their ignorance, they can be directly responsible for more than actions and omissions, and their moral obligations extend beyond the performance of intentional actions and omissions. (shrink)

An encyclopedia article on the epistemic or knowledge condition for moral responsibility, written for the SEP.

In Infinity and the Mind, Rudy Rucker leads an excursion to that stretch of the universe he calls the "Mindscape," where he explores infinity in all its forms: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, theological and mundane. Here Rucker acquaints us with Gödel's rotating universe, in which it is theoretically possible to travel into the past, and explains an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which billions of parallel worlds are produced every microsecond. It is in the realm of infinity, (...) he maintains, that mathematics, science, and logic merge with the fantastic. By closely examining the paradoxes that arise from this merging, we can learn a great deal about the human mind, its powers, and its limitations. Using cartoons, puzzles, and quotations to enliven his text, Rucker guides us through such topics as the paradoxes of set theory, the possibilities of physical infinities, and the results of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. His personal encounters with Gödel the mathematician and philosopher provide a rare glimpse at genius and reveal what very few mathematicians have dared to admit: the transcendent implications of Platonic realism. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a socially situated account of responsible agency, the main tenet of which is that the powers that constitute responsible agency are themselves socially constituted. I explain in detail the constitution relation between responsibility-relevant powers and social context and provide detailed examples of how it is realized by focusing on what I call ‘expectations-generating social factors’ such as social practices, cultural scripts, social roles, socially available self-conceptions, and political and legal institutions. I then bring my account (...) to bear on the debate about the exculpatory potential of moral ignorance. I show that a prominent position in this debate – the position that denies that moral ignorance exculpates – is grounded on an individualistic and acontextualist conception of moral capacities, moral cognition, and blameworthiness, and that this conception leads those philosophers who endorse it to make a number of questionable claims regarding the ability of ordinary agents to overcome their moral ignorance and the culpability they bear for the latter. I conclude by indicating how my socially situated account addresses the issue of moral ignorance. (shrink)

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is (...) often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi To solve a problem such as wars between nations and civil wars it is necessary to discover what causes the problem.

What does it mean to drive a Cadillac? What does 'cuckoo' suggest about the bird? -- two examples explored in this investigation of the history of language signs and of what philosophers, linguists, and others have had to say about them. Rudi Keller shows how signs emerge, function, and develop in the permanent process of language change. He recombines thoughts and ideas from Plato to the present day to create a new theory of the meaning and evolution of icons and (...) symbols. By assuming no prior knowledge and by developing his argument from first principles, Rudi Keller has written a basic text which includes all the necessary features: easy style, good organization, original scholarship, and historical depth. This is a non-technical book which will interest linguists, philosophers, students of communications and cultural studies, semioticians/semanticists, sociologists, and anthropologists. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi 1850 CE The British Invent a new rifle...

Anders, Rudi Sometimes it is nice to do something totally unconnected to the usual bustle of life, such as a walk in the park. This time I visit a German Lutheran church in Melbourne; I have never entered it before. The exterior and interior consistently retain the traditional design. The bluestone gives it a sense of permanence - timelessness. I rarely like modern churches; mixing modern and traditional never works for me. This church is not large and has an intimate (...) feel to it. The people are all smiles. I like people, regardless of their beliefs. Family groups look like they feel at home, and visitors like me are made welcome. I sit and admire the skill of the craftsmen who attended to every detail in the church. They didn't have the modern machines we take for granted. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi They dance in view, they dance in secret. And yet they dance together...

The interactive nature of the Internet is seen by some as a technological innovation that might boost participation in politics and civic affairs. That potential, however, is clouded by imprecise definitions of interactivity found among scholars and practitioners alike. Evaluation of state legislature Web sites found them to not be very interactive under most definitions of the term. Chief technology officers of the legislatures appear to differ as to which site features promote interactivity. The current state of these sites may (...) do more to encourage civic engagement than to promote interactivity. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that queer women – especially cis and trans lesbians – have more in common than contemporary fissures either allow for or acknowledge. Lesbians who recognised their queer sexuality in the 1970s have in common with trans women the shared condition of being, in the words of the 1970s radical feminist Marilyn Frye, ‘spat summarily out of reality’. We also share the experience of refusing to accept this condition. I make this argument by manoeuvring away from (...) questions of gender identity and focusing instead on gender’s ontoformativity: the astonishing, welcome and transformative fact that new social realities are brought into being by new social practices. I turn to experimental writing to explore this matter. Through this medium, the cis lesbian poet Nicole Brossard and the trans lesbian poet Trace Peterson wrote themselves into worlds, languages and social orders that refused to acknowledge their existence. Brossard was writing in 1970s Montreal, Peterson in early twenty-first-century New York, but what they have in common, indeed what radical lesbian theory from the 1970s shares with contemporary theorising by trans women, is the insight that identifying with men is expected. It is in identifying with women that we are most at risk. (shrink)

My title echoes Levinas' 1951 “Is ontology fundamental?” – a seminal piece that paved the way for his justly famous Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being. I suggest that the characteristically enthusiastic, uncritical reception of these works may not be due primarily to their originality and sheer intellectual brilliance, but rather to something in Levinas' position that deeply resonates with the spirit of our times and our preoccupation with the fate of “the Other.” My claim, however, is that accepting (...) a Levinassian ethics, in which the Other has priority over the self, comes at too high a price, for it implies definitions of otherness and selfhood that fail to address precisely the problems that prompted preoccupation with otherness in the first place. I suggest that our struggles with racism, sexism, cultural bias point to frictions in (inter-)subjectivity that are inappropriately ethicized when treated, ala Levinas, simply as examples of an unwillingness to open up to the Other. In Levinas' universe, it is impossible not to hear the Other's appeal, but I argue that this view ignores the existence of a dimension of selfhood that cannot be absorbed into intersubjectivity. A metaphysical loneliness is thus implied here that our age seems unwilling to bear, preferring to cover it up with an ethics that makes us always responsible – that is, in response, connected to the Other. I develop this criticism by analyzing what I call a non-privative notion of irresponsibility whose roots are neither ethical nor ontological. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi A Melbourne suburb A short speech Congratulations..

Anders, Rudi I enjoy mixing with people who hold different beliefs from mine. Belief is a very complex and rather odd thing. I am particularly interested in the psychology of belief. Sometimes belief is the cause of terrible conflict and suffering.

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral and expressive individualism. (...) For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

The article explores similarities between the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Aristippus, focusing in particular on play and eudaimonism. The main thesis is that both authors encourage the cultivation of a playful mindset, defined in the paper as the “ludic self”, which operates as a strategy for leading a flourishing life. By shaping a fluid, unstructured identity, the ludic self promotes negative subtraction from the structuring power of social nexus and proactive adaptation to shifting circumstances. Furthermore, some aspects of these philosophies (...) present an inter-disciplinary convergence with scientific findings from the psycho-biology of play, concerned with the mobilization of cathected energies and the prevention, or resolution, of addictive states. These promising connections with the fields of psychology and biology also represent an original contribution in respect to the existing debates within Zhuangzi studies, and scholarship on the Cyrenaics. From a methodological point of view, the article pursues what Rorty defines as a “rational reconstruction”, which involves a re-interpretation of past philosophies in light of present debates, ideas and vocabularies with the aim of engaging a trans-cultural, trans-historical dialogue. The value of this operation relies upon the universality of human experience, which always allows re-interpretation and re-actualization of past philosophies as a dialogical exercise of questioning otherness within a hermeneutic framework. (shrink)

Les pages que Husserl a consacrées à l'art et à la conscience esthétique sont rares et éparses. Il n'en reste pas moins que la théorie qui y voit le jour fait preuve d'une grande systématicité. L'oeuvre d'art, comme elle le sera plus tard chez Sartre, y est invariablement désignée au titre d'objet irréel. Non qu'elle ne possède une effectivité matérielle qui en assure la présence dans le champ de la perception et en constitue le soubassement physique, mais, bien plutôt, qu'elle (...) soit illocalisable dans ce champ et irréductible à ce soubassement. La raison en étant que l'objet d'art est un objet imaginaire qui ne trouve dans la réalité dont il est fait que le moyen de s'y objectiver et non celui de s'y individualiser. Son irréalité, il la reçoit du regard "désintéressé", au sens kantien du terme, qu'il appelle, de la visée intentionnelle particulière qui lui donne d'apparaître en tant que "néant" ou "rien", comme se plaît à le répéter Husserl. C'est à retracer la genèse de cette conception dématérialisée de l'oeuvre artistique et du type de conscience qui l'appréhende que s'attache ce livre, non moins qu'à en cerner les enjeux théoriques. Deux voies d'investigation ont été privilégiées à cet égard. L'une, interne, s'efforce d'en dégager la provenance et d'en saisir le statut au sein même de la phénoménologie husserlienne. L'autre, externe, la confronte à des théories esthétiques rivales et à la production artistique dont elle a à rendre compte afin, par contraste, d'en faire jaillir et d'en apprécier la véritable portée heuristique. Le résultat est que les catégories conceptuelles élaborées par Husserl pour fonder son approche du phénomène de l'art et de l'intention qui en prend acte s'avèrent, en définitive, sujettes à la critique. (shrink)

Rudi Visker's book is not only a lucid and elegant survey of Foucault's corpus, from his early work on madness to the History of Sexuality, but also a major intervention in this debate.

O marxismo aparece insistentemente na teologia e no magistério de Joseph Ratzinger-Bento XVI como um inimigo permanente ao qual o cristianismo deve se contrapor, sem possibilidades de conciliação entre ambos. Mas qual concepção subjaz essa rejeição tão peremptória, tão decidida? Para alcançarmos a resposta a tal questão, aprofundamos a visão de Joseph Ratzinger a partir de alguns de seus escritos teológicos (anteriores ao pontificado) e, em seguida, nas suas três encíclicas, o ponto alto de seu magistério papal ( Deus caritas (...) est, Spe salvi e Caritas in veritate ). Defendemos que a crítica de Bento XVI, antes de ser exclusivamente teológica (ou doutrinária), é filosófica, baseada na racionalidade e não na fé professada pela Igreja, que lhe permite tratar o marxismo não simplesmente como um programa político que vai contra alguns valores cristãos, mas como uma escatologia judaico-cristã secularizada, um messianismo político, portanto, como uma religião , como uma fé , que nega e esvazia o núcleo essencial da fé cristã. E aqui está a raiz da sua oposição. Palavras-chave: Marxismo. Bento XVI. Messianismo. Escatologia política.: Marxism appears repeatedly in Pope Benedict’s theology and teaching as a permanent enemy that Christianity must oppose without any possibilities of conciliation between them. However, what underlies this decisive rejection? To answer this question we look further into Joseph Ratzinger’s perspective starting with some of his theological writings (before the pontificate) followed by three of his encyclicals, the high point of his papal teaching ( Deus caritas est , Spe salvi e Caritas in veritate ). We argue that Benedict XVI's criticism, prior to being purely theological (or doctrinal), is philosophical, based on rationality and not in the faith professed by the Church, allowing him to treat marxism not simply as a political program that goes against some Christian values, but as a secularized Judeo-Christian eschatology, as a political messianism, therefore, as a religion, as a faith , that denies and empties the essential core of the Christian faith. And here is the root of his opposition. Keywords: Marxism. Benedict XVI. Messianism. Political eschatology. (shrink)

Perhaps due to the familiarity with the experience of travel, travel has remained a partial “unthought” in the history of philosophy. By bringing philosophy, literature, sociology and anthropology into dialogue, the volume addresses travel in its dual meaning of concept and experience, attempting on the one hand, to explore it as a cultural constant, and on the other, to describe its multiple manifestations, with particular attention to contemporaneity, in which the practices of mass tourism, virtual tourism, flânerie and urbex gain (...) increasing relevance. But travel also has an anachronistic dimension, because it puts us in relation to desire, which is timeless. Desire always follows a motion elsewhere: it is wavering, restless, vagabond, it pushes us to leave and change incessantly. The desire to be someone else, to be somewhere else. This volume reflects on the relationship we have with desire and identity through travel, which is capable of transforming both. (shrink)

Metaphors “highlight and hide” different aspects of phenomena. A behavioral economic metaphor for excessive consumption highlights the contextual features of behavioral-environment relations. Can the behavioral momentum metaphor generate a representation of context that is at least as useful as that generated by behavioral economics? Maybe, maybe not; or maybe a mixed metaphor will do a better job than either alone.

Metaphysics in discussion : the medieval context -- The degrees of abstraction and the metaphysical Separatio -- From physics to metaphysics : the way of Resolutio -- The transcendental focus of metaphysics -- The place of analogy in metaphysics -- From experience to transcendence -- The double challenge to metaphysics in the present-day world.

Previous studies have consistently argued that employees' perception of their leaders as charismatic will positively influence their willingness to commit themselves to the ethical and philanthropic objectives of the organization. However, the empirical relationship between charisma and employee work effort is only modestly explored. This study hypothesizes that in decentralized, professional, and normative organizations characterized by demanding and philanthropic tasks, group belonging, in its capacity to socially and professionally support employees, is better suited to explain employee work effort than leadership (...) charisma. Hierarchical regression analyses based on data from a bishopric supported this assumption. Practical and theoretical consequences are discussed. (shrink)

The contemporary animal rights movement encompasses a wide range of sometimes-competing agendas from vegetarianism to animal liberation. For people for whom pets are family members—animal lovers outside the fray—extremist positions in which all human–animal interaction is suspect often discourage involvement in the movement to end cruelty to other beings. In _Loving Animals_, Kathy Rudy argues that in order to achieve such goals as ending animal testing and factory farming, activists need to be better attuned to the profound emotional, even (...) spiritual, attachment that many people have with the animals in their lives. Offering an alternative to both the acceptance of animal exploitation and radical animal liberation, Rudy shows that a deeper understanding of the nature of our feelings for and about animals can redefine the human–animal relationship in a positive way. Through extended interviews with people whose lives are intertwined with animals, analysis of the cultural representation of animals, and engaging personal accounts, she explores five realms in which humans use animals: as pets, for food, in entertainment, in scientific research, and for clothing. In each case she presents new methods of animal advocacy to reach a more balanced and sustainable relationship association built on reciprocity and connection. Using this intense emotional bond as her foundation, Rudy suggests that the nearly universal stories we tell of living with and loving animals will both broaden the support for animal advocacy and inspire the societal changes that will improve the lives of animals—and humans—everywhere. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi The articles in AH I like best are the ones with which I disagree to a greater or lesser degree, because they force me to re-think and clarify my position. One such article was by John Perkins, titled 'Let's admit that Islam is a problem'. Although the article is very well-written, and I admire John's fact-finding regarding Islam, I think he misses the elephant in the room. Namely, Christian Europe and North America killed far more people than Islam (...) ever did. Buddhist and Shinto Japan did shocking things in the last world war. Jews in Israel ignore the rights of Palestinians. The atheist communist Soviet Union was as bad as Christian Czarist Russia. There is gross injustice in Hindu India. I don't think Islam should be singled out as a problem. I agree that religion can be a problem but the many atheist dictators, for example: Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini and Stalin, are also a problem, so atheism as such is not a guarantee of justice. (shrink)

The present study consists of a cross-cultural analysis of the role of irony in the Blue Cliff Record. The analysis is structured in four chapters, one devoted to methodological concerns and three to equivalent types and functions of irony within the text, a pivotal literary work of the Chan Buddhist tradition. In relation to Chan studies, a discussion of irony is particularly important since the wide corpus of Chan literature includes a significant number and a consistent variety of ironic features (...) such as puns, wordplay, extravagant acts, and so forth. The idea of the present paper is that the ironic temperament of Chan is not a contingent circumstance, but a functional strategy purposely employed in textual compositions and oral communication with soteriological purposes. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that a necessary condition on moral blameworthiness is that the wrongdoer can reasonably be expected to avoid the action for which she is blamed. Those who think so assume as a matter of course that the expectations at issue here are normative expectations that contrast with the non-normative or predictive expectations we form concerning the probable conduct of others, and they believe, or at least assume, that there is a clear-cut distinction between the two. In this paper (...) I put this widespread assumption under scrutiny and argue that it’s mistaken: although predictive and normative expectations are indeed distinct, there is no sharp separation between them. On the contrary, predictive expectations can have a substantial bearing on normative expectations in two related ways: they can recalibrate what is reasonable to expect of agents when responsibility attributions are at stake and they can help to uncover previously undetected excusing conditions. I illustrate my claims with the famous bystander effect from social psychology and show that it yields predictive expectations that affect normative expectations in these two ways. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi Mathematics is objective and unambiguous, but as soon as mathematics is applied to anything in the human world, human values complicate the issues. Two apples for two people equals one apple for each person, but compassion for a starving person, or other human values, can alter the outcome.

In this article I discuss David Shoemaker’s recently published piece “Responsibility: The State of the Question. Fault Lines in the Foundations.” While agreeing with Shoemaker on many points, I argue for a more unified diagnosis of the seemingly intractable debates that plague (what I call) “responsibility studies.” I claim that, of the five fault lines Shoemaker identifies, the most basic one is about the role that the notion of deserved harm should play in the theory of moral responsibility. I argue (...) that the deep divide between those theorists who affirm and those who deny that moral responsibility is essentially about the justification of desert thus understood can be traced to the disagreement about whether the focus on the reactive attitudes by itself entails that moral responsibility has nothing to do with traditional questions about desert and free will. I then show that the seeming intractableness of the other four fault lines Shoemaker identifies is expectable and explicable in light of this more basic disagreement. After this diagnostic work, I conclude by suggesting a solution to the “morass” that has taken over responsibility studies: theorists working in the field should acknowledge that it has effectively bifurcated into two discrete subareas, which I suggest calling “retribution studies” and “interpersonal studies.” -/- . (shrink)