Replying to Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke, this article shows how Political Marxism offers powerful conceptual tools to understand modes of production that structure historical processes as fundamentally constituted by exploitative social and political relations. I explain how structure, or rules of reproduction, should be understood as alienated social relations, which are inherent to all class societies. Understanding structure this way leaves ample space for – and makes inevitable – the consideration of agency.

Many of the philosophical doctrines purveyed by postmodernists have been roundly refuted, yet people continue to be taken in by the dishonest devices used in proselytizing for postmodernism. I exhibit, name, and analyse five favourite rhetorical manoeuvres: Troll's Truisms, Motte and Bailey Doctrines, Equivocating Fulcra, the Postmodernist Fox Trot, and Rankly Relativising Fields. Anyone familiar with postmodernist writing will recognise their pervasive hold on the dialectic of postmodernism and come to judge that dialectic as it ought to be judged.

The longstanding philosophical orthodoxy on counterfactuals holds, in part, that counterfactuals with metaphysically impossible antecedents are indiscriminately vacuously true. Drawing on a number of examples from across scientific practice, I argue that science routinely treats counterpossibles as non-vacuously true and also routinely treats other counterpossibles as false. In fact, the success of many central scientific endeavors requires that counterpossibles can be non-vacuously true or false. So the philosophical orthodoxy that counterpossibles are indiscriminately vacuously true is inconsistent with scientific practice. I (...) argue that this provides a conclusive reason to reject the orthodoxy. (shrink)

Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism is frequently attributed to the broader Austrian School of economics, of which, of course, Mises was a prominent member. However, there is considerable controversy concerning the meaning of Mises’s various attempts to justify his apriorism. There are prima facie inconsistencies within and across Mises’s methodological writings that engender massive confusion in the secondary literature. This confusion is aggravated by the fact that Mises’s apriorism cannot be straightforwardly interpreted as an artifact of his historical milieu. Indeed, (...) the two prevailing families of interpretation both treat Mises’s apriorism as radically anachronistic, albeit in different senses. According to “extreme” interpretations, Mises’s apriorism reflects an epistemology several decades, if not centuries, beyond its expiration date. According to “moderate” interpretations, however, Mises’s apriorism anticipates ideas that would not appear in the epistemological literature for several decades to come. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that Mises’s actual methodological beliefs are not reflected in his writings, that Mises either obfuscated or exaggerated his methodological position, for whatever reasons, making it seem more radical than it was in fact. I conclude that we have no idea what justification Mises actually intended when he asserted the a priori nature of the fundamental propositions of economics. If this is right, then, whatever method(s) they follow, Austrian economists cannot (deliberately) follow Mises’s apriorism. (shrink)

A common view is that ceteris paribus clauses render lawlike statements vacuous, unless such clauses can be explicitly reformulated as antecedents of ?real? laws that face no counterinstances. But such reformulations are rare; and they are not, we argue, to be expected in general. So we defend an alternative sufficient condition for the non-vacuity of ceteris paribus laws: roughly, any counterinstance of the law must be independently explicable, in a sense we make explicit. Ceteris paribus laws will carry a (...) plethora of explanatory commitments; and claims that such commitments are satisfied will be as (dis) confirmable as other empirical claims. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Kant's doctrine of radical evil, arising from as diverse quarters as philosophy, psychoanalysis and the social sciences. This interest has contributed to the revival of the notion of evil, which had been displaced from the center of philosophical discussion in the 20th century. A common trait in the recent literature is that it takes the relevance of the use of the concept of evil for granted. Yet, before understanding what Kant (...) really means by radical evil, it seems appropriate to ask first whether the notion of evil as such is necessary. For, given its religious background, this notion elicits expectations that may be incompatible with the secular concerns of moral philosophy. Such misgivings are aggravated by additional doubts about the concept's explanatory function in the first place. The pertinence of reviving a concept so allegedly flawed cannot be taken at face value. Thus, the task I set for myself here is to show the necessity of the concept of evil as it lies at the core of Kant's moral philosophy already in the Groundwork, far before he actually coins the notion of “radical evil” in the Religion. Whether this latter account is defensible or not, we will at least be sure that talk about an evil which is said to be radical is not in vain. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim argues that if mental properties are irreducible with respect to physical properties then mental properties are epiphenomenal. I believe this conditional is false and argue that mental properties, along with their physical counterparts, may overdetermine their effects. Kim contends, however, that embracing overdetermination in the mental case, due to supervenience, renders the attribution of overdetermination vacuous. This way of blocking the overdetermination option, however, makes the attribution of mental epiphenomenalism equally vacuous. Furthermore, according to Kim’s own logic, physical (...) properties, and not mental properties, may be in danger of losing their causal relevance. (shrink)

Nearly all of the ways philosophers currently attempt to define the terms ‘representation’ and ‘function’ undermine the scientific application of those terms by rendering the scientific explanations in which they occur vacuous. Since this is unacceptable, we must develop analyses of these terms that avoid this vacuity. Robert Cummins argues in this fashion in Representations, Targets, and Attitudes. He accuses ‘use theories’ of representational content of generating vacuous explanations, claims that nearly all current theories of representational content are use (...) theories, and offers a non-use theory of representational content which avoids explanatory vacuity. One task I undertake in this article is to develop an alternative non-use theory which avoids an objection fatal to that theory. (shrink)

In the last decade, there has been a notable upsurge in property (PD) and generic substance dualism (SD). By SD I mean the view that there is a spiritual substantial soul that is different from but variously related to its body. SD includes Cartesian, certain forms of late Medieval hylomorphic (e.g., Aquinas'), and Haskerian emergent SD. Nevertheless, some form of physicalism remains the majority view in philosophy of mind. Several fairly standard objections have been raised against SD, and SDists have (...) been preoccupied with these objections. As a result, a potent objection has not been given the attention it deserves. The purpose of this article is to fill that lacuna by raising the visibility of this objection and providing plausible responses to it. First, I shall clarify the explanatory–impotence challenge and, second, provide defeaters against it. Note that several of the issues to follow apply both to PD and SD. I will focus mostly on SD, but sometimes PD is a part of the discussion in that certain arguments for and against PD indirectly affect SD. When it is important for me to note that either SD or PD is specifically being addressed, I will notify the reader. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed ‘anti-political’(EH ‘wise’ 3; cf. TI 8.4) stance is often ignored.1 Commentators, that is, often interpret Nietzsche’s texts as responding to familiar issues within political philosophy, and as furnishing a novel position therein. This could indeed be the appropriate hermeneutic response. Dismissing one of Nietzsche’s proclamations is, on a variety of different grounds, hermeneutically reasonable. In this particular case, given all that Nietzsche has to say about sociality and the roles of public institutions in modern life, dismissal might even (...) seem compelling. Here, however, I wish to recuperate Nietzsche’s anti-political stance. That is, I shall argue that Nietzsche’s self-proclamation does in fact reflect his deep commitments, and thus compels a reassessment of the political interpretations of his thought. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed ‘anti-political’(EH ‘wise’ 3; cf. TI 8.4) stance is often ignored.1 Commentators, that is, often interpret Nietzsche’s texts as responding to familiar issues within political philosophy, and as furnishing a novel position therein. This could indeed be the appropriate hermeneutic response. Dismissing one of Nietzsche’s proclamations is, on a variety of different grounds, hermeneutically reasonable. In this particular case, given all that Nietzsche has to say about sociality and the roles of public institutions in modern life, dismissal might even (...) seem compelling. Here, however, I wish to recuperate Nietzsche’s anti-political stance. That is, I shall argue that Nietzsche’s self-proclamation does in fact reflect his deep commitments, and thus compels a reassessment of the political interpretations of his thought. (shrink)

Proponents of intelligent design theory seek to ground a scientific research program that appeals to teleology within the context of biological explanation. As such, intelligent design theory must contain principles to guide researchers. I argue for a disjunction: either Dembski’s ID theory lacks content, or it succumbs to the methodological problems associated with creation science—problems that Dembski explicitly attempts to avoid. The only concept of a designer permitted by Dembski’s explanatory filter is too weak to give the sorts of explanations (...) which we are entitled to expect from those sciences, such as archeology, that use effect-to-cause reasoning. The new spin put upon ID theory—that it is best construed as a “metascientific hypothesis”—fails for roughly the same reason. (shrink)

I extend Jones & Love's (J&L's) critique of Bayesian models and evaluate the conceptual foundations on which they are built. I argue that: (1) the part of Bayesian models is scientifically trivial; (2) theory is a fiction that arises from an inappropriate programming metaphor; and (3) the real scientific problems lie outside Bayesian theorizing.

Merleau-Ponty’s explication of concrete or practical movement by way of the Schneider case could be read as ending up close to automatism, neglecting its flexibility and plasticity in the face of obstacles. It can be contended that he already goes off course in his explication of Schneider’s condition. Rasmus Jensen has argued that he assimilates a normal person’s motor intentionality to the patient’s, thereby generating a vacuity problem. I argue that Schneider’s difficulties with certain movements point to a means (...) of broadening Merleau-Ponty’s account of concrete movement, one that he broaches without exploiting. What could do more work is his recognition of a transposition capacity - and hence of a plasticity - in the healthy body’s skill schema. As well as avoiding vacuity, he could forestall the appearance of a dichotomy between practical coping and creativity. (shrink)

The problem of ceteris paribus clauses and Hempel’s problem of provisos are closely-related difficulties. Both challenge advocates of accounts of scientific theories involving laws understood as universal generalizations, and they have been treated as identical problems. Earman and Roberts argue that the problems are distinct. Towards arguing against them, I characterize the relationship between Hempel’s provisos and one way of expressing ceteris paribus clauses. I then describe the relationship between the problems attributed to the clauses, suggesting that they form a (...) single problem-cluster. However, Hempel’s way of formulating provisos and discussing what they involve entangles provisos with the problem of skepticism. This creates a departure in Hempel’s discussion of provisos from the distinctive problem of vacuity which characterizes the problem of ceteris paribus clauses, though for different reasons than Earman and Roberts suggest. (shrink)

Vacuity, vanity, proposal of a elapsed time fadeaway, an essay in portuguese language, soon on english.

The significance or vacuity of the statement, “Everything has just doubled in size,” attracted considerable attention last century from scientists and philosophers. Presenting his conventionalism in geometry, Poincaré insisted on the emptiness of a hypothesis that all objects have doubled in size overnight. Such expansion could have meaning, he argued, “only for those who reason as if space were absolute … it would be better to say that space being relative, nothing at all has happened.” The logical empiricists concurred, (...) viewing the universal doubling hypothesis as illustrating the intrinsic metrical amorphousness of continuous manifolds. It is striking, therefore, to find Kant invoking a universal contraction in space and time to support his famous doctrine of transcendental idealism. In one of several completely neglected passages, he writes: “The proof that the things in space and time are mere appearances can also be grounded on the fact that the whole world could be contained in a nutshell and the entirety of elapsed time in a second without the least difference being met with.” Kant's “also” may suggest an idealist argument distinct from any proposed in published works. Here I ask: What is the meaning of Kant's Nutshell Argument for Idealism? (shrink)

A counterpossible is a counterfactual whose antecedent is impossible. The vacuity thesis says all counterpossibles are true solely because their antecedents are impossible. Recently, some have rejected the vacuity thesis by citing purported non-vacuous counterpossibles in science. One limitation of this work, however, is that it is not grounded in experimental data. Do scientists actually reason non-vacuously about counterpossibles? If so, what is their basis for doing so? We presented biologists (N = 86) with two counterfactual formulations of (...) a well-known model in biology, the antecedents of which contain what many philosophers would characterize as a metaphysical impossibility. Participants consistently judged one counterfactual to be true, the other to be false, and they explained that they formed these judgments based on what they perceived to be the mathematical relationship between the antecedent and consequent. Moreover, we found no relationship between participants’ judgments about the (im)possibility of the antecedent and whether they judged a counterfactual to be true or false. These are the first experimental results on counterpossibles in science with which we are familiar. We present a modal semantics that can capture these judgments, and we deal with a host of potential objections that a defender of the vacuity thesis might make. (shrink)

This paper considers the applicability of standard accounts of causation to living systems. In particular it examines critically the increasing tendency to equate causal explanation with the identification of a mechanism. A range of differences between living systems and paradigm mechanisms are identified and discussed. While in principle it might be possible to accommodate an account of mechanism to these features, the attempt to do so risks reducing the idea of a mechanism to vacuity. It is proposed that the (...) solution to this problem requires the development of a philosophical account of process adequate to apply to living systems. (shrink)

According to the so-called ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’ thesis, while deliberating about what you’ll do, you cannot rationally have credences for what you’ll do – you cannot rationally have option-credences. Versions of the thesis have been defended by authors such as Spohn, Levi, Gilboa, Price, Louise, and others. After registering a number of concerns about the thesis, I rehearse and rebut many of the main arguments for it, grouped according to their main themes: agency, vacuity, betting, and decision-theoretical considerations. (...) I go on to suggest many possible theoretical roles for option-credences. -/- I locate the debate about the thesis in a broader discussion: Are there rational credence gaps – propositions to which one cannot rationally assign credences? If there are, they spell trouble for various foundations of Bayesian epistemology, including the usual ratio formula for conditional probability, conditionalization, decision theory, and independence. According to the thesis, credence gaps are completely mundane; they arise every time someone rationally deliberates. But these foundations are safe from any threat here, I contend, since the thesis is false. Deliberation welcomes prediction. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy of race is between eliminativists and conservationists about what we ought do with ‘race’ talk. ‘Eliminativism’ is often defined such that it’s committed to holding that (a) ‘race’ is vacuous and races don’t exist, so (b) we should eliminate the term ‘race’ from our vocabulary. As a stipulative definition, that’s fine. But as an account of one of the main theoretical options in the debate, it’s a serious mistake. I offer three arguments for why eliminativism (...) should not be tethered to vacuity or error theory, and three arguments for why the view shouldn’t be understood in terms of eliminating the term ‘race’ from our vocabulary. Instead, I propose we understand the debate as concerning whether certain uses of ordinary race terms are typically wrong. This proposal is quite simple, and naturally suggested by the common gloss that eliminativism about ‘race’ is akin to a commonsensical view about 'witch' talk. But nonetheless, I argue that it offers a significant recharacterization of this core debate in philosophy of race. (shrink)

The paper defends the thesis that institutional virtue is properly modeled as a ‘‘consensual’’ property, along the lines of the Lehrer–Wagner model of consensus (LWC). In a first step, I argue that institutional virtue is not exhausted by duty-fulfilling, since institutions, contrary to natural individuals, are designed to fulfill duties. To avoid the charge of vacuity, virtue, if attributed to institutions, must be able to motivate supererogatory action. In a second step, I argue against dis- continuity of institutional virtue (...) with individual virtue. Two main arguments for discontinuity of collective properties display serious shortcomings when applied to virtues of institutions. Given that motivation for supererogatory action is neither inferred from statutory duties nor accommodates a right of reprobation, modeling institutional virtue on collective rationality or explaining it in terms of joint com-mitment both prove problematic. In a third step, I argue that LWC has the explanatory potential to account for institutional virtue. Due to its main features,iteration and evaluation, it provides a non-trivial analysis of continuity and thereby satisfies basic constraints on the notion of genuine institutional virtue. (shrink)

, Pietroski and Rey ([1995]) suggested a reconstruction of ceteris paribus (CP)-laws, which — as they claim — saves CP-laws from vacuity. This discussion note is intended to show that, although Pietroski and Rey's reconstruction is an improvement in comparison to previous suggestions, it cannot avoid the result that CP-laws are almost vacuous. It is proved that if Cx is an arbitrary (nomological) event-type which has independently identifiable deterministic causes, then for every other (nomological) event-type Ax which is not (...) strictly connected with Cx or with ¬Cx, ‘CP if Ax then Cx’ satisfies the conditions of Pietroski and Rey for CP-laws. It is also shown that Pietroski and Rey's reconstruction presupposes the assumption of determinism. The conclusion points towards some alternatives to Piectroski and Rey's reconstruction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to further develop van Fraassen’s diagnosis, expanding a previous analysis of the fundamental law of classical genetics and the status of the so-called ‘Mendel’s laws’.6 According to this diagnosis the Hardy-Weinberg law: 1) cannot be considered as axiom (or fundamental law) for classical population genetics, since it is a law that describes an equilibrium that 2) holds only under certain special conditions, and 3) only determines a subclass of models, 4) whose generalized form (and (...) fundamental law) being shading off into logical vacuity, and 5) more complex variants of the fundamental law (and of the Hardy-Weinberg law) can be “deduced” for more realistic assumptions. In order to achieve this, I will use notions of the structuralist view of theories, a version that is related to but different from that of van Fraassen’s. These are the notions of fundamental law, specialization, and special law. Having as a background a structuralist reconstruction of classical population genetics, I will show why the Hardy-Weinberg law should not be in fact considered the fundamental law of such a theory, but a special law (and not even a “terminal” specialization, i.e. a “non-terminal” specialization). (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that all counterpossibles are vacuously true. Yet there are strong arguments both for and against the use of non-vacuous counterpossibles in metaphysics. Even more compelling evidence may be expected from science. Arguably philosophy should defer to best scientific practice. If scientific practice comes with a commitment to non-vacuous counterpossibles, this may be the decisive reason to reject semantic orthodoxy and accept non-vacuity. I critically examine various examples of the purported scientific use of non-vacuous counterpossibles and argue (...) that they are not convincing. They neither establish that scientific practice comes with a commitment to the non-vacuity of counterpossibles, nor that incurring such a commitment would be useful in scientific practice. I illustrate a variety of counter-strategies on behalf of orthodoxy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that classical theists should think of God as having created morality. In form, my position largely resembles that defended by Richard Swinburne. However, it differs from his position in content in that it evacuates the category of necessary moral truth of all substance and, having effected this tactical withdrawal, Swinburne's battle lines need to be redrawn. In the first section, I introduce the Euthyphro dilemma. In the second, I argue that if necessary moral truths are (...) seen as analytically/logically so, then, pace Swinburne, they cannot be regarded as substantive principles. Thus, seeing necessary moral truths as analytically/logically necessary and independent of God does not threaten God's power or sovereignty and leaves open the possibility that all value is contingent upon His will. In the third section, I turn to consider how the claim that all value is contingent upon God's will might best be understood, arguing that classical theists will want to commit themselves to a relatively strong form of objectivism about moral value (even though this is not needed in order to solve the Euthyphro dilemma). I then give and defend an account of God's creation of contingent moral truths which coheres with what I argue is the most plausible form of this commitment. In the following section, I argue that this account avoids the charge that God is arbitrary in His choice of values and, finally, I argue that it avoids the charge that God may not be said to be good without vacuity. Thus, I conclude that the Euthyphro dilemma does not threaten classical theism. (shrink)

This article defends Hegel against Schelling’s critique that his system can only comprehend actuality but cannot explain it. It does so while granting Schelling’s his basic premise, namely, that Hegel’s system is entirely logical. Hegel’s account of comprehension effectively answers Schelling’s ‘despairing’ question: why is there something rather than nothing? In the first part, I reconstruct Schelling’s critique, showing that he takes Hegel’s system to be entirely logical; as logical, a priori, and as a priori, unable to explain existence. In (...) the second part, I advance a moderately deflationary reading of Hegel on which philosophy, as comprehending cognition, guarantees the non-vacuity of its categories by deriving them through conceptually transforming the universals of empirical science. Given its compellingness as a response to Schelling’s critique, this moderately deflationary reading warrants further development as an interpretation of Hegel’s thought. (shrink)

I will explore the paradoxical nature of epistemic access. By critiquing the traditional conception of mental states that are labelled as ’knowledge’, I demonstrate the susceptibility of these states to an infinite regress, thus, challenging their existence and validity. I scrutinise the assumption that an epistemic agent can have complete epistemic access to all facts about a given object while simultaneously being ignorant of certain truths that impact the very knowledge claims about the object. I further analyse the implications of (...) this paradox when attempting to fine-grain the parameters of epistemic access, which happens to reveal the vacuity of such definitions and the inevitability of the regress. (shrink)

En uno de los ataques más reiterados a Darwin, que todavía subsiste en la literatura actual, se señala que la teoría de la selección natural es tautológica, analítica o, al menos, irrefutable. En docenas de artículos, diversos autores han señalado las condiciones en que la selección natural quedaría refutada, intentando mostrar que no carece de contenido empírico. La estrategia seguida en este trabajo será otra. Teniendo en cuenta que la crítica de tautologicidad o irrefutabilidad ha sido esgrimida contra leyes fundamentales (...) de otras teorías, insertaré la discusión en un marco metateórico más amplio. Para discutir el estatus del segundo principio de la mecánica clásica, Moulines introduce el concepto de "principio guía". Los principios guía no serían contrastables directamente, sino a través de especializaciones. Desde mi punto de vista, considerar a la selección natural como principio guía permitiría explicar por qué muchos la han considerado tautológica y cómo esto no implica vacuidad. One of the most repeated objections to Darwin, still present in contemporary literature, outlines that theory of natural selection is tautological, analytical or at least irrefutable. There are many authors that point out the conditions in which natural selection would be refuted, trying to prove that it doesn't lack of empirical content. This essay will work on a different strategy. Taking into account that tautological or irrefutable criticism has been put forward against other theories' fundamental laws; I will insert the argumentation in a wider theoretical frame. To argue about the status of the second principle about classic mechanical Moulines introduces the 'guiding principle' concept. The guiding principles wouldn't be directly contrastable. The only way in which they could be contrastable would be through special laws. From my point of view natural selection, considered as the guiding principle, would explain why many thinkers had considered it a tautology and how this does not imply vacuity. (shrink)

Fodor and LePore's attack on conceptual role semantics relies on Quine's attack on the traditional analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions, which in turn consists of four arguments: an attack on truth by convention; an appeal to revisability; a claim of confirmation holism; and a charge of explanatory vacuity. Once the different merits of these arguments are sorted out, their proper target can be seen to be not the Traditional Distinctions, but an implicit assumption about their superficial availability that (...) we have abundant reason to reject. Once we reject it, we can see how issues of the absorbtion of conventions, the revisability of belief, and confirmation holism are compatible with the Traditional Distinctions, and that Quine's discussion only serves to camouflage the question of whether some confirmation relations are constitutive of meaning and knowable a priori. (shrink)

Psychophysics measures the attributes of perceptual experience. The question of whether some of these attributes should be interpreted as more fundamental, or “real,” than others has been answered differently throughout its history. The operationism of Stevens and Boring answers “no,” reacting to the perceived vacuity of earlier debates about fundamentality. The subsequent rise of multidimensional scaling (MDS) implicitly answers “yes” in its insistence that psychophysical data be represented in spaces of low dimensionality. I argue the return of fundamentality follows (...) from a trend toward increasing epistemic humility. Operationism exhibited a kind of hubris in the constitutive role it assigned to the experimenter’s presuppositions that is abandoned by the algorithmic methods of MDS. This broad epistemic trend is illustrated by following the trajectory of research on a particular candidate attribute: tonal volume. (shrink)

The recent republication of David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery in a second edition provides an occasion to reappraise the celebrated work which launched the so-called Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. This work embodies the general outlook and foundational principles in a way that is still characteristic of its descendents. Above all, the recent republication of Bloor's original book is evidence of the continuing interest and importance of the work, but it also provides the clearest evidence of (...) the shortcomings of the enterprise. The arguments presented in the bulk of the book have received relatively little attention by comparison with the principal tenets enunciated in the first few pages. Accordingly, a detailed examination is made of these original arguments which were so influential in establishing the sociology of scientific knowledge. A close analysis reveals their seemingly unnoticed vacuity, as well as a vast discrepancy between the radical tenets of the Strong Programme and the theses that are actually defended in the body of Bloor's text. In this sense, this article serves to complement and reinforce Mario Bunge's recent masterful survey of the field, which he describes as "a grotesque cartoon of scientific research.". (shrink)

Scientific realists have argued that the truth(likeness) of our theories provides the only explanation for the success of science. I consider alternative explanations proposed by antirealists. I endorse Leplin's contention that neither van Fraassen's Darwinist explanation nor Laudan's methodological explanation provides the sort of explanatory alternative which is called for in this debate. Fine's suggestion--that the empirical adequacy of our theories already explains their success--is more promising for antirealists. Leplin claims that this putative explanation collapses into realism on one reading (...) and into vacuity on another reading. But his analysis conflates three doctrines into two, and one of the three avoids both realism and vacuity. (shrink)

Alisdair ManIntyre's well-known criticism of modern moral philosophy contrasts what he sees as the moral vacuity of modern culture with a ‘classical tradition' in ethical thought depicted as restoring cohesion and coherence to social striving and ethical life. MacIntyre's stress on the culturally specific circumstances within which ethical imperatives derive their force provides a corrective to unworldly tendancies within post-Kantian moral philosophy, yet his ‘classical’ ethical landscape possesses an equally striking kind of unworldliness. His image of a life lived (...) as an unbroken moral narrative is dependent on a picture of classical social existence viewed as an integrated whole, as opposed to the ethical ‘segmentation’ of modern social life. Here I question this image of a moral life without boundaries by reference to perhaps the most influential of all classical ethical texts, Cicero's De Officiis. I argue that Cicero's discussion of the virtues is marked by a strong sense of the demarcation of ethical spheres and statuses, and that what MacIntyre takes as the appropriate end-product of ethical ascesis is instead a highly exceptional heroic limit-case. (shrink)

Dispositionalists try to provide an account of modality—possibility, necessity, and the counterfactual conditional—in terms of dispositions. But there may be a tension between dispositionalist accounts of possibility on the one hand, and of counterfactuals on the other. Dispositionalists about possibility must hold that there are no impossible dispositions, i.e., dispositions with metaphysically impossible stimulus and/or manifestation conditions; dispositionalist accounts of counterfactuals, if they allow for non-vacuous counterpossibles, require that there are such impossible dispositions. I argue, first, that there are in (...) fact no impossible dispositions; and second, that the dispositionalist can nevertheless acknowledge the non-vacuity of some counterpossibles. The strategy in the second part is one of ‘divide and conquer’ that is not confined to the dispositionalist: it consists in arguing that counterpossibles, when non-vacuous, are read epistemically and are therefore outside the purview of a dispositional account. (shrink)

I argue that appreciation of the phenomenon of forgetting requires serious attention to its origins and place in nature. This, in turn, necessitates metaphysical inquiry as well as empirical backing – a combination likely to be eschewed by psychological orthodoxy. But, if we hope to avoid the conceptual vacuity that characterizes too much of contemporary psychological inquiry (e.g., Klein, 2012, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a), a “big picture” approach to phenomena of interest is essential. Adopting this investigative posture turns the “received (...) view” of the relation between remembering and forgetting on its head: Rather than treated as the result of breakdowns and limitations of biologically engineered systems of remembering, forgetting is accorded elevated status as the driving force behind the evolution of organic systems of information retention. (shrink)

The principle of human moral equality is poorly understood. I criticize standard accounts and propose a mildly subversive alternative based in a certain view of the phenomenology of conceptual thought. First, a formulation of the principle: -/- (E) Every person has a basic moral worth equal to that of any other. -/- E is vague, as it should be. It is neutral regarding rival theories of the nature of the equalizing property or its value, or how we recognize either. But (...) I impose two constraints on the principle that seem to reflect a universal consensus among its proponents: E asserts a kind of worth (or status or value) that (i) is indifferent to ordinary moral judgments of character, merit, or desert and (ii) forbids political arrangements we intuitively judge to be at odds with the spirit of basic equality. The first constraint protects against absurdity or nihilism, the second against vacuity. (shrink)

A radical thinking of space remains for phenomenology a difficulty, which Heidegger has been concerned with. He developed an existential conception of the spatiality of Dasein in Being and Time, which he abandoned in his later philosophy; according to its “turn,” this philosophy proposes a notion of emptiness to describe spatial experience. The paper endorses the view that this notion makes possible a thinking of space in its essence. Pursuing further the reflection concerning the empty space, Maldiney advocates the influence (...) of the East Asian tradition on this issue. However, given that none of these authors considers dance as an art susceptible to disclose space in its essential vacuity, this paper aims to argue that there is a true choreographic empty space. (shrink)

Je resitue tout d'abord la notion d'égalité dans le contexte historique de la société industrielle moderne, afin d'en retracer la genèse. Cette approche vise à introduire le lecteur au problème de la saisie conceptuelle de la notion d'égalité et de la détermination de son contenu. C'est l'occasion de discuter si cette notion peut répondre à une fonction heuristique ou bien si elle n'a qu'un rôle éristique. L'hypothèse développée est qu'une telle notion constitue plutôt une représentation schématique de celle de justice. (...) La vacuité principielle du schème d'égalité a, par ailleurs, toujours pour effet de nous reconduire en définitive à l'examen de sa fonctionnalité opérationnelle.I set up at first the notion of equality within the historical context of modern industrial society, so that its genesis is recalled to mind. This way of approach aims at placing the reader in front of the problem which consists in apprehending conceptually the notion of equality and in determining its content. That gives the opportunity to inquire thereinto, if the considered notion may have an heuristic value or else only an eristic character. The unfolded hypothesis is that such a notion provides rather a schematic depiction for the one of justice. The vacuity in itself of the schema of equality compels moreover to ponder after all its operational functionality everywhere it is applied. (shrink)

It has always been the fate of centrally important concepts in public debate to be used promiscuously. ‘Democracy’, for instance, has long been assigned multiple contested meanings; its meaning is univocal only in the minds of passionate advocates of a single political project seeking to monopolize usage of the term, whether Liberals or Leninists. Theorists tend to worry about this conceptual promiscuity more than practitioners, who, firing off loaded concepts in the heat of political battle, are impatient of reminders that, (...) perhaps, this or that concept is not being consistently used as originally intended. “No matter,” says the busy practitioner, “it is doing the job I currently intend.” This reply is often justified: scholarly intrusions into public debate are sometimes appropriately dubbed ‘academic’ . However, when rhetorical skirmishes cease and a concept gets to be embedded in public policy or legislation, clarity is indispensable.This, of course, summarizes the recent career of the concept of ‘subsidiarity’, which has been nominated as possibly ‘the most contentious abstract noun to have entered European politics since 1789’ . Advocates of both centralization and decentralization currently invoke it with the same firmness of conviction. Its inclusion in the Maastricht Treaty, far from having generated clear guidelines on how to determine the proper balance between European and national competences, has only served to highlight the competing interpretations which it can, apparently, bear. ‘Subsidiarity’ is suffering from a ‘clarity deficit’ which needs remedying. My aim in what follows is to contribute to that process of clarification and to suggest ways in which the concept might be critically developed.First, I attempt to retrieve the original meaning of subsidiarity and exhibit its intrinsic relationships to related concepts of community and the common good. I seek to show that subsidiarity is only one aspect of a broader theory, rooted in Catholic social thought, of the proper relationship between persons and communities. Subsidiarity takes its meaning from an elaborate social theory which is personalist, pluralist and communitarian. Charges of vacuity against subsidiarity are only to be expected when the concept is treated in isolation from this background theory. Second, I identify and attempt to remedy certain deficiencies of the concept by critically elaborating what I take to be its central intent. In a brief conclusion, I indicate the need to bring the concept into dialogue with alternative models of the person-community relationship. (shrink)

The rule-following paradox of Kripke's Wittgenstein posits that there is no fact of the matter about an individual that can determine whether he means one thing or another by a term, such as "+". The paradox thus renders the existence of meaning illusory. The objective of this thesis is to examine the paradox and try to offer a version of a dispositional account that can counteract Kripke's skeptics. ;Gaining insights from previous dispositionalist accounts of meaning and rule-following, including those of (...) Dretske, Fodor, Millikan, Martin & Heil, Shogenji, and Yallowitz, my project is to put all those insights together to formulate a functional view of human dispositions to rule-following which will resolve the error, finitude, and first-person epistemic problems that Kripke raises against the dispositionalist approach. Specifically, I argue that rule-following or meaning consists in one's possessing a disposition, realistically construed. A rule-following disposition is real in the sense that it is responsible for, and hence not to be equated with, its manifestations under various conditions. A person acquires a real disposition to rule-following through a learning history which is constrained by biologically innate human endowments of learning and cognition. The error problem then becomes the problem of how to identify the disposition without vacuity or circularity. My claim is that identifying a rule-following disposition is a task of scientific hypothesizing, which is epistemically and methodologically sound. The finitude problem is in my view a form of Humean inductive skepticism. My response to it is to adopt a reliabilist theory of justification and its treatment of the induction problem. A distinctive contribution of mine is to offer a functionalist account of dispositions and introspection in the resolution of the first-person epistemic problem. My aim is to do full justice to the phenomenology and epistemology of meaning and rule-following from the first-person point of view. ;My conclusion is that a satisfactory dispositional account such as the one I offer not only vindicates the reality of rule-following and meaning but also increases our understanding of the nature of meaning and human rule-following phenomenon. (shrink)

De Constantia Sapientis 17.1 contains two animal-based insults, the interpretation of which has heretofore proven controversial because of the difficulties in pinpointing the exact nature/identity of comparandum and comparatum. An adequate appreciation of the passage requires assessing the function of these contumeliae within Seneca's philosophical strategy. Their ontological vacuity reflects the imaginative status of the two animals selected to construct the jibes. Thus, one should resist rage, not only on account of this passion being self-damaging but also because imagination (...) is a faulty cognitive process. (shrink)

Despite its lack of content, the concept of dignity plays a central role in the German bio-ethical discussion because it appears in Article 1 in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The architects of the constitution, like those of the other laws in which the concept appears, thereby pursued the aim of anchoring human rights in the nature of human beings. It has been suggested that the vacuity of the concept be filled by interpreting it with Kant. (...) This saddles one with the insoluble problems of the Kantian prescriptive ethic. It therefore makes more sense to interpret human dignity in terms of a volitional ethics and to situate it in the possession of human rights, which in turn is deduced from the goal orientedness of human activity, thus avoiding circularity. (shrink)

Into Jeffrey Tulis’s argument that “the rhetorical presidency signals and constitutes a fundamental transformation of American politics” he inserts parenthetically the question, “Has the rhetorical presidency now given birth to the rhetorical judiciary?” Whether the rhetorical presidency birthed or simply predated the rhetorical judiciary is open to question. The existence of the rhetorical judiciary is not. Since the publication of The Rhetorical Presidency, judges and their interlocutors have ratified one of the insights that grounded Tulis’s question, while challenging another. They (...) have borne out his fear that judges would increasingly respond to attack; his worry about the vacuity of confirmation hearings for those nominated to the Supreme Court, however, has not been similarly confirmed. (shrink)