If affirmative action and other ethnicity-based social programs are justified, then J. Angelo Corlett believes it is important to come to an adequate understanding of the nature of ethnicity in general and ethnic group membership in particular. In Race, Racism, and Reparations, Corlett reconceptualizes traditional ideas of race in terms of ethnicity. As he makes clear, the answers to the questions "What is a Native American?" or "What is a Latino?" have important implications for public policy, especially for those programs (...) designed to address historic injustices and economic and social imbalances among different groups in our society. Having supplanted "race" with a well-defined concept of ethnicity, the author then analyzes the nature and function of racism. Corlett argues for a notion of racism that must encompass not only racist beliefs but also racist actions, omissions, and attempted actions. His aim is to craft a definition of racism that will prove useful in legal and public policy contexts. Corlett places special emphasis on the broad questions of whether reparations for ethnic groups are desirable and what forms those reparations should take: land, money, social programs? He addresses the need for differential affirmative action programs and reparations policies—the experiences of different ethnic groups vary greatly. Arguments for reparations to Native and African Americans are considered in light of a variety of objections that are or might be raised against them. Corlett articulates and critically analyzes a number of possible proposals for reparations. (shrink)

* This is a fragment of J. L. Schellenberg’s paper “Divine Hiddenness and Human Philosophy” originally published in Adam Green and Eleonore Stump, Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief, 23–25, 28. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Artificial Neural Networks have reached “grandmaster” and even “super-human” performance across a variety of games, from those involving perfect information, such as Go, to those involving imperfect information, such as “Starcraft”. Such technological developments from artificial intelligence (AI) labs have ushered concomitant applications across the world of business, where an “AI” brand-tag is quickly becoming ubiquitous. A corollary of such widespread commercial deployment is that when AI gets things wrong—an autonomous vehicle crashes, a chatbot exhibits “racist” behavior, automated credit-scoring processes (...) “discriminate” on gender, etc.—there are often significant financial, legal, and brand consequences, and the incident becomes major news. As Judea Pearl sees it, the underlying reason for such mistakes is that “... all the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.” The key, as Pearl suggests, is to replace “reasoning by association” with “causal reasoning” —the ability to infer causes from observed phenomena. It is a point that was echoed by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis in a recent piece for theNew York Times: “we need to stop building computer systems that merely get better and better at detecting statistical patterns in data sets—often using an approach known as ‘Deep Learning’—and start building computer systems that from the moment of their assembly innately grasp three basic concepts: time, space, and causality.” In this paper, foregrounding what in 1949 Gilbert Ryle termed “a category mistake”, I will offer an alternative explanation for AI errors; it is not so much that AI machinery cannot “grasp” causality, but that AI machinery (qua computation) cannot understand anything at all. (shrink)

This article argues that, despite their distance across the colonial divide, a creolizing reading of Frantz Fanon and Paul Ricœur can yield valuable insights into decoloniality. Tracing their shared philosophical concerns with embodied phenomenology, social ontology and recognition, I argue that their respective accounts of sociogeny and hermeneutics can be productively read together as describing a shared end of mutual recognition untainted by racism or coloniality – a ‘new skin’ for humanity, as Fanon describes it. More specifically, Fanon contributes to (...) Ricœur an understanding of how divergences in social location can be overcome through liberatory action that posits a new logic of sociality; likewise, Ricœur provides Fanon with an account of how liberatory horizons are produced through this praxis, based on the imaginative connection between ideology and utopia. This article concludes by arguing that these congruent methodological and normative concerns can be read together to concretize – and potentially actualize – the utopic end of liberatory struggle in mutual recognition through fashioning this new skin. (shrink)

Head transplantation fits within the broader conceptual space occupied by transhumanists and others who seek to extend the lives of human beings indefinitely. It is reasonable to reflect on whether, under what circumstances, and in what ways human immortality would be good. In this paper, I disambiguate the ways in which immortality might be considered a human good and then argue that immortality is neither necessary nor sufficient condition for objective meaning in life. I also argue that mortality is not (...) a necessary condition for objective meaning in life. (shrink)

Bart Streumer employs a reductio ad absurdum to show that a hyperintensional conception of properties has a multiplication problem; roughly, this conception of properties leads to the absurd result that we can multiply distinct but co-intensional properties without end. In this paper, I will explain why Streumer’s reductio fails to convince.

This paper will develop the concept of semiogenesis – a process of novel sign generation – and how instances of this process, such as agency, relate to their built environment and beyond. Section two will build on Hoffmeyer’s discussion of swarms, specifically the idea of overlapping swarms and its manifestation in the creation of termite mounds, in order to introduce three types of structure. Building upon this real-world example explored in section two, the third section will present a heuristic for (...) semiogenesis: a neuromorphic dynamic system model grounded in information and thermodynamic theory. Through the lens of this heuristic model, the penultimate section will more rigorously characterize the similarities and differences between termite and human agency in their respective built milieus. (shrink)

Prof. Alberto Urquidez, in an important recent article that appears in different form in his book, Redefining Racism, offers an informed, sustained, careful, multi-pronged, and sometimes original critique of the volitional analysis of racism, which I have proposed in a series of articles over the past two dozen years. Here I expand and improve VAR’s analysis of paternalistic racists and their beliefs, clarify its ‘infection’-model’s explanation of racism’s spread and variety, and lay out what it is for something to be (...) ‘characteristically’ racist, an understanding that I then use to offer a unified account of the way in which both certain physical objects and certain abstract objects can properly be called racist. Identifying and engaging some presuppositions behind Urquidez’s social, political, and moral criticisms of VAR, I respond to complaints from him and others, showing that VAR’s content is neither politically conservative nor dependent on religious doctrine, and point out that race theory would in fact profit from taking more seriously and internalizing the Christian morality of most African-Americans. (shrink)

The reception history of the French Revolution in France and England is well documented among Anglophone scholars; however, the debate over the Revolution in Germany is much less well known. Fichte's Contribution played an important role in this debate. Presented here for the first time in English, Fichte's work provides a distinctive synthesis of Locke's "possessive individualism," Rousseau's general will, and Kant's moral philosophy. This eclectic blend results in an unusual rights theory that at times veers close to a form (...) of anarchism. Written in 1792–93, just before Fichte moved to Jena to develop his philosophical system in a series of works—above all the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794—the Contribution provides invaluable insight into Fichte's early development. In addition, Fichte's work predates much of Kant's political philosophy, and can shed light on the rich dialogue in German political thought in the 1790s. (shrink)

J.L. Chretien is a French public intellectual, philosopher and poet, widely published and revered in his home country and in academic circles worldwide. This translation makes his work available to an English-language audience for the first time and a crucial contribution to our understanding of the phenomenology of religious experience.

We aim to move the externalism and self-knowledge debate forward by exploring two novel sceptical challenges to the prospects of self-knowledge of a paradigmatic sort, both of which result from ways in which our thought content, cognitive processes and cognitive successes depend crucially on our external environments. In particular, it is shown how arguments from extended cognition ; Clark A. Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press ) and situationism, Alfano M. Expanding the situationist challenge (...) to reliabilism about inference. In Fairweather A Virtue epistemology naturalized, Springer, Dordrecht, pp 103–122 ; Doris JM. Noûs 32:504–530, Doris JM. Lack of character: Personality and moral behavior. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; Harman G. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. 99:315–331, Harman G. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100:223–226 ) pose hitherto unexplored challenges to the prospects of self-knowledge as it is traditionally conceived. It is shown, however, that, suitably understood, these apparent challenges in fact only demonstrate two ways in which our cognitive lives can be dependent on our environment. As such, rather than undermining our prospects for attaining self-knowledge, they instead illustrate how self-knowledge can be extended and expanded. (shrink)

In this book, J.H. Plumb investigates the way that humankind has, since the beginning of recorded time, molded the past to give sanction to their institutions of government, their social structure and morality. The past has also been called upon to explain the nature of our destiny in order both to strengthen the objectives of society and to reconcile us to our lot. J.H. Plumb questions this sanction of the past, the force that it has on our sense of destiny (...) and its relevance to our own times. This classic text is now reissued with a new introduction by Niall Ferguson, placing it within a contemporary context, and with a new foreword by the eminent historian Simon Schama, a former student of J.H.Plumb himself. (shrink)

The role of microaggressions has gained increasing philosophical attention in recent years. However, microaggressions only tell part of the story. An often-overlooked component of inequality is the uneven and unjust distribution of microaffirmations. In this paper, I give a new definition of microaffirmations as signals that a recipient belongs to some valued or high-status class. Microaffirmations can—but need not—lead individuals to gain a sense of confidence, belonging, and merit. I then explain the harms of microaffirmations, arguing that when microaffirmations are (...) distributed inequitably, they can have larger ramifications for injustice, harming some vulnerable groups more than others. In addition, microaffirmations can lead individual actors to make choices based on who gives them microaffirmations and where they receive them, and thus can have outsized influence over the direction of an individual’s life because individuals tend to migrate to where they feel valued, appreciated, and included. I then turn to solutions to the problems I raise. I argue we should attend to and attempt to rectify inequalities in microaffirmations because doing so can help ensure not just the absence of negative attention, but also that the presence of positive attention is flowing in a just and equitable way. (shrink)

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the (...) principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career. (shrink)

(1979). Some Observations on the Problems of Grading Examinations with Several Components: a reply to P. J. Squire. Educational Studies: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 225-230.

It is a landmark theorem of McKinsey and Tarski that if we interpret modal diamond as closure, then $$\mathsf S4$$ S4 is the logic of any dense-in-itself metrizable space. The McKinsey–Tarski Theorem relies heavily on a metric that gives rise to the topology. We give a new and more topological proof of the theorem, utilizing Bing’s Metrization Theorem.

This chapter discusses methodology in epistemology. It argues that settling the facts, even the epistemic facts, fails to settle the questions of intellectual policy at the centre of our epistemic lives. One upshot is that the standard methodology of analysing concepts like knowledge, justification, rationality, and so on is misconceived. More generally, any epistemic method that seeks to issue in intellectual policy by settling the facts, whether by way of abductive theorizing or empirical investigation, no matter how reliable, is inapt. (...) The argument is a radicalization of Moore’s open-question argument. In conclusion, the ramifications of this argument for the debate surrounding modal security, a proposed necessary condition on undermining defeat, are considered. (shrink)

Stephen Finlay’s proposed methodology for defending the central theses of his impressive Confusion of Tongues is an underexplored aspect of this work.1 1 His official methodology is analytic : A reduction of normative to non-normative vocabulary. Here, I argue that taking this official line at face-value forces the reader to conclude that the reductions at the heart of that book cannot be correct. In contrast, a philosophical methodology that does not proceed via analyses would better support those reductions, then understood (...) as non-analytic. As we’ll see below, there are independent, empirical reasons to reject a philosophical methodology that proceeds via analyses. I conclude that there is a method for the study of ethical language that better serves Finlay’s primary philosophical aims. The lesson, though, is generalizable: Given the array of normative and meta-normative theories, we want a semantics for normative discourse to be capable of expressing, we should expect that the more plausible such views will not be defended via analyses. (shrink)

This article explores the tension between an understanding of Europe as purveyor of a certain kind of cultural, spiritual or religious identity and the more or less bureaucratic project of European construction undertaken in its name. The central axis of this tension is the theoretical relationship between identity and legitimacy. The classical modern problem of nation-state building involves integrating the legitimating force of collective identity into the institutions of the state. How does the project of European construction respond to an (...) analogous challenge? This article develops this theoretical question by turning to two canonical positions concerning the relation between institutional legitimacy and its cultural, spiritual or religious under-pinnings - Montesquieu and Weber. It then returns to the founding documents of the EU in order to interrogate the legitimacy of the EU in light of the concept of European identity. (shrink)

The parodos of the Frogs is one of the most controversial passages in Aristophanes. Was it intended to parody the Eleusinian Mystery procession—or some other ritual? A writer wishing to discuss any part of the parodos must first outline his position with regard to this basic problem. I shall therefore as simply and briefly as possible state my own view and the reasons for it before dealing with the specific question posed by the title of the article.

In this article we would like to scrutinize the particular problems which are connected with the self-reflection of theoretical thinking and its meaning. Often, philosophy is considered as the science of science. In philosophy the demarcation between true knowledge and sheer belief or opinion must be justified. One could say that this task is as old as Western philosophy itself. Since Greek philosophy one of the main questions is how we can know the truth and how we are able to (...) discern true from alleged knowledge. (shrink)

The prospect of recognizing the ultimate is a matter of interpretation. As such, hermeneutics is used as a framework for describing the interactions of self, language, and the other (whether culturally other or ultimately other). Questioning whether religious ultimacy can be recognized across religious boundaries is based on a mistaken assumption that differences between religions are qualitatively different than differences within a religion. Hermeneutically speaking, intra-communal difference and inter-communal difference are of the same kind. If humans can negotiate the former, (...) they can negotiate the latter. Recognizing ultimacy is an intersubjective act of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. As such, it cannot be explained in any detail apart from the concrete particulars of each encounter. Below is an account of recognizing the Ultimate, analyzed into four explanatory ways: its immediate quality (uncanniness), its vehicle (the classic), its cultural-linguistic mechanism (metaphorical appropriation), and its ontological implications (a signifying cosmos). Each way offers a different type of explanation as to how a person can recognize another religion’s ultimate. I begin with the most concrete: spontaneous feeling, and work my way to more speculative implications. (shrink)