Identity and democracy and, more particularly, national identity and deliberative democracy account for a controversial relationship. However, from a classical deliberative democratic point of view, the controversy over who is the ‘we’ that needs to stand together in contemporary complex societies settled with the constitution of modern states. In this sense, the main contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I rebut the analytical appropriateness and conceptual coherence of Habermas’ discursive approach to democracy for the case of (...) plurinational societies in contemporary constitutional democracies. A discussion of a test case – Catalonia – demonstrates that this inadequacy renders incoherent the deliberative model regarding one of its most fundamental premises: the equal weight of the principles of law and the principle of democracy. On the other hand, I sustain that the challenge is not about identity but democracy, and more particularly, about the role deliberative democracy is called to play when controversy challenges whether the people of a state do conform to a single people or not. More concretely, I explore the opportunities offered by the systemic turn to sustain a more realistic approach to deliberative democracy regarding its capacity to steer society towards integration in the context of the system of public deliberation. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta a Weber y Habermas como los umbrales o polos de una modernidad que tiene al progreso como horizonte teórico-práctico. El diagnóstico weberiano sobre la modernidad y su proceso de desencantamiento del mundo y la injustificada reducción de la actividad racional a una actividad utilitario-estratégica desprovista de su carácter veritativo y de su orientación valórica, Habermas la utiliza para justificar su propuesta teórico-crítica respecto a la modernidad y la "paradoja de la racionalización", distinguiendo "sistema" y "mundo vital". Aquí (...) "desencantamiento del mundo" y "consenso del proyecto de lamodernidad", se encuentranThis article presents Weber and Habermas like the thresholds or poles of a modernity that has to the progress as theoretical- practical horizon. The diagnosis weberiano on the modernity and his process of disenchantment of the world and the unjustified reduction of the rational activity to a utilitarian-strategic activity devoid of his character of truth, Habermas uses to justify his theoretical-critical offerwith regard to themodernity and the "paradox of the rationalization", distinguishing "system" and "vital world". Here "disenchantment of the world" and "consensus of the project of the modernity", they are. (shrink)

I provide a phenomenological response to Quentin Meillassoux’s “realist” criticism of phenomenology and I explore the resources and limits of phenomenology in its own attempt to grapple with the paradox Meillassoux believes sinks it: subjectivity has priority over the physical reality it constitutes despite the anteriority and posteriority of that physical reality to subjectivity. I first offer a corrective to Meillassoux’s interpretation of Husserl. Then, I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on the philosophy of nature, where he addresses the (...) class='Hi'>paradox by interpreting Husserl in the light of Schelling. I argue throughout that the correct understanding of Husserl’s concept of constitution, and particularly, passive constitution, defangs this realist criticism of phenomenology and suggests phenomenology to be capable of a Naturphilosophie intimating pre-reflective being. The prime instance of this pre-reflective being is subjectivity’s entanglement with a reality that encompasses it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrön (...) Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

This paper aims to present how logic may undermine a parliamentary assault on democratic institutions based on the analysis conducted with reference to the so-called Polish constitutional crisis. I analyse whether a law can be reviewed on the basis of this law itself. The Polish Constitutional Tribunal faced such a problem while passing the verdict of 9th March, 2016, regarding the constitutionality of the amendment to the Statute on the Constitutional Tribunal from 22nd December, 2015. This problem, (...) called a ‘verdict paradox’, was claimed to be a type of the Liar paradox. I argue that, contrary to the common view, the problem of the verdict paradox is not based on the Liar paradox; for this purpose, a logical analysis is applied to four variants of a reasoning with regard to the constitutionality of the said amendment. The distinction between two levels of analysis concerning emerging reasonings, namely an abstract level and a concrete level placed in the context of the legal system, is also introduced. This paper demonstrates that although only two variants of the reasoning concerning a law’s judicial review based on the law itself involve logical contradiction, the possibility of employing reasonings from other variants must be excluded, albeit due to alternative reasons. Therefore, the Constitutional Tribunal’s decision to avoid the verdict paradox by passing over the reviewed provisions in the review process was correct and might be perceived as an example of how logic and reason can defend the institutional guarantees of political freedom. (shrink)

Logical paradoxes in the strict sense produce statements like those of the Liar ("This very statement is false") that are false if true, and true if false. They resist rational solution or at least divide logicians for centuries of apparently irreconcilable wrangling. What happens when similar paradoxes arise in law?

This article argues that Christine Korsgaard gives two accounts of maxims, the identity-priority account and the form-priority account. There is a tension between the accounts because Korsgaard's form-priority maxims account cannot function apart from the identity of a well-formed agent that precedes and tests maxims to determine if they should count as reasons or laws, and Korsgaard's identity-priority maxims account needs the form of the maxim to precede, bind, and constitute the well-formed agent. This tension mirrors the two sides of (...) what Korsgaard has called the “paradox of self-constitution.” The article concludes that Korsgaard's paradox of self-constitution leads to an arbitrariness that undermines the formation of moral laws. (shrink)

In this article I assess the prospects for a particular kind of resolution to Moore’s Paradox. It is that Moore’s Paradox is explained by the existence of a constitutive norm on belief. I focus on a constitutive norm relates that relates belief to knowledge. I develop this explanation. I then present a challenge to it. Norm-based explanations of Moore’s Paradox must appeal to a ‘linking principle’ that explains what is wrong with violating the constitutive norm. But it (...) is difficult to articulate a plausible candidate linking-principle. I show this by canvassing the obvious candidates and articulating the problems with each. (shrink)

The French and Dutch referenda on the adoption of a European Constitutional Treaty highlight a remarkable ambiguity in the self‐constitution of a polity, which can be viewed as both constitution by and of a collective self. This ambiguity is a fundamental feature of polities in general, and the European Union in particular. Rather than suppressing this ambiguity, democracy—and a fortiori a European democracy worth its name—institutionalises it as the guiding principle of political action. As will transpire, the conceptual and (...) normative problems raised by political self‐constitution are linked to self‐attribution, i.e., the conditions under which a collective ascribes legislation to itself. (shrink)

Agency and identity -- Necessitation -- Acts and actions -- Aristotle and Kant -- Agency and practical identity -- The metaphysics of normativity -- Constitutive standards -- The constitution of life -- In defense of teleology -- The paradox of self-constitution -- Formal and substantive principles of reason -- Formal versus substantive -- Testing versus weighing -- Maximizing and prudence -- Practical reason and the unity of the will -- The empiricist account of normativity -- The rationalist account of (...) normativity -- Kant on the hypothetical imperative -- Against particularistic willing -- Deciding and predicting -- Autonomy and efficacy -- The function of action -- The possibility of agency -- Non-rational action -- Action -- Attribution -- The psychology of action -- Expulsion from the garden : the transition to humanity -- Instinct, emotion, intelligence, and reason -- The parts of the soul -- Inside or outside -- Pull yourself together -- The constitutional model -- Models of the soul -- The city and the soul -- Platonic virtues -- Justice : substantive, procedural, and platonic -- Kant and the constitutional model -- Defective action -- The problem of bad action -- Being governed by the wrong law -- Or five bad constitutions -- Conceptions of evil -- Degrees of action -- Integrity and interaction -- Deciding to be bad -- The ordinary cases -- Dealing with the disunified -- Kant's theory of interaction -- My reasons -- Deciding to treat someone as an end in himself -- Interacting with yourself -- How to be a person -- What's left of me? (shrink)

In this paper, I present a game-theoretic solution to the rule-following paradox in terms of what I will call basic constitutive practices. The structure of such a practice P constitutes what it is to take part in P by defining the correctness conditions of our most basic concepts as those actions that lie on the correlated equilibrium of P itself. Accordingly, an agent S meant addition by his use of the term ‘+’ because S is taking part in a (...) basic constitutive practice of adding where quus-like answers are ruled out by not lying on the equilibrium. The resulting picture of language will preserve the objectivity and correctness conditions of meaning, all the while providing room for the community as a whole to make a mistake. I also argue that by accepting the account presented, we have a strong reason to reject the idea that language is rule-governed. (shrink)

Certain works in the most recent Polish constitutional law literature suggest that there is acceptance of the principle or the concept of autonomous interpretation of a constitution (autonomy of interpretation of constitutional terms). The Constitutional Tribunal also makes reference to this in numerous rulings. Paradoxically, however, that concept is not very popular in legal theory. It might seem that Polish legal theoreticians and philosophers do not appreciate the concept of interpretation of a constitution devised through practice with (...) the support of constitutional law doctrine. It might, however, mean that opinions on autonomous interpretation of Polish Constitution are nothing more than rhetorical arguments formulated ad hoc not a coherent concept or a theory. This text is an attempt to analyse this concept and its potential in discussions surrounding application of the Polish Constitution. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a game-theoretic solution to the rule-following paradox in terms of what I will call basic constitutive practices. The structure of such a practice P constitutes what it is to take part in P by defining the correctness conditions of our most basic concepts as those actions that lie on the correlated equilibrium of P itself. Accordingly, an agent S meant addition by his use of the term ‘+’ because S is taking part in a (...) basic constitutive practice of adding where quus-like answers are ruled out by not lying on the equilibrium. The resulting picture of language will preserve the objectivity and correctness conditions of meaning, all the while providing room for the community as a whole to make a mistake. I also argue that by accepting the account presented, we have a strong reason to reject the idea that language is rule-governed. (shrink)

Cognitive values are the characteristics that are constitutive of good theories, the criteria to which we appeal when choosing among competing theories. I argue that, in order to count as a cognitive value, a characteristic must be needed to explain actually made theory choices, and its cognitive significance must be well defended especially in view of considerations derived from the objective of science. A number of proposed objectives of science are entertained, and it is argued that adopting a par-ticular objective (...) is dialectically intertwined with commitment to certain social values.Then, the ways in which science is, and is not value free is explored briefly, leading to the identification of a level of analysis where values may influence theory choice without causing paradox or threatening the impartiality of soundly-made scientific judgments. (shrink)

Many have claimed that legitimate constitutional democracy is either conceptually or practically impossible, given infinite regress paradoxes deriving from the requirement of simultaneously democratic and constitutional origins for legitimate government. This paper first critically investigates prominent conceptual and practical bootstrapping objections advanced by Barnett and Michelman. It then argues that the real conceptual root of such bootstrapping objections is not any specific substantive account of legitimacy makers, such as consent or democratic endorsement, but a particular conception of the (...) logic of normative standards—the determinate threshold conception—that the critic attributes to the putatively undermined account of legitimacy. The paper further claims that when we abandon threshold conceptions of the logic of legitimacy in favor of regulative-ideal conceptions, then the objections, from bootstrapping paradoxes to the very idea of constitutional democracy, disappear. It concludes with considerations in favor of adopting a more demanding conception of the regulative ideal of constitutional democracy, advanced by Habermas, focusing on potentials for developmental learning. (shrink)

Amartya Sen has demonstrated a possible inconsistency between a (liberal) right and Pareto optimality. Neither Sen nor the subsequent literature have discussed the origin of the rights that lead to the liberal paradox. In this article I examine one possible origin of rights definitions-a constitutional contract agreed to by all members of the community. Constitutional rights are show to be vulnerable to a similar paradox as with liberal rights, but if the writers of the constitution were (...) correct in their choice of actions to protect, such paradoxes will be unlikely and involve small welfare losses when they do occur. The article demonstrates that both the origin of rights and their potential role in advancing the interests of citizens can be explained using a utilitarian/welfarist methodology. (shrink)

I discuss some problems faced by the meaning‐inconsistency view on the liar and sorites paradoxes which I have elsewhere defended. Most of the discussion is devoted to the question of what a defender of the meaning‐inconsistency view should say about semantic competence.

The aim of the paper is to discuss some recent variants of familiar puzzles concerning the relations of parts to wholes put forward by Trenton Merricks and Eric Olson. The argument is put forward that so long as the familiar distinction between 'loose and popular' and 'strict and philosophical' senses of identity claims is accepted the paradoxical conclusions at which Merricks and Olson arrive can be resisted. It is not denied that accepting the distinction between 'loose and popular' and 'strict (...) and philosophical' senses of identity claims is itself a departure from common-sense, but it is argued that it is the smallest such departure available to us. (shrink)

All democratic constitutions feature "the people" as their author and ultimate source of legitimacy. They claim to embody the political form that citizens are in some sense supposed to have given themselves. But in what sense, exactly? When does a constitution really or genuinely speak for the people? Such questions are especially pertinent to our present condition, where the voice of "the people" turns out to be irrevocably fragmented, and people themselves want to speak and be heard in their own (...) voices. _Founding Acts_ explores the relationship between constitutional claims of popular sovereignty and the practice of constitution-making in our pluralistic age. Serdar Tekin argues that the process of making a constitution, or its pedigree, is as morally and politically significant as its content. Consequently, democratic constitution-making is not only about making a democratic constitution but also about making it, as much as possible, democratically. Tekin develops two overarching arguments in support of this claim. First, citizen participation in the process of constitution-making is essential to the democratic legitimacy of a new constitution. Second, collective action, that is, the political experience of constructing public life together, is what binds diverse people into a democratic peoplehood. Bringing into dialogue a wide range of canonical and contemporary thinkers, Tekin examines historical realities extending from revolutionary America and France to contemporary South Africa and Germany. (shrink)

Modal constitution theory is one of the most influential solutions to the paradoxes of coincidence, and the problem of personal identity. It rests on three fundamental premises: common-sense objects exist; sometimes objects coincide in space; the coincidence of objects in space requires explanation. In this article, the author offers a critique of the modal theory of constitution. First, the definition of the constitution is examined and a new argument is offered that modal theory either does not provide asymmetry of the (...) constitution or leads to an infinite series of constitutive objects, unsatisfactorily extending ontology. Also, the author demonstrates that possible additions to the constitutive definition, which can make the definition sufficient for asymmetric relation, lead to additional theoretical difficulties, leading to the logical impossibility of constitution relation. Second, the author demonstrates that the theory of constitution offers an unsatisfactory theory of identity because it faces three problems: the overpopulation problem, the epistemic problem, and the personal problem. All of these considerations lead the author to conclude that modal constitution theory is not metaphysically satisfactory. (shrink)

Our cultural situation is to seek a moral form of self-constitution, rather than an ontological or epistemological foundation. Such a moral ground lies in the paradox of willing surrender of the will to do wrong or dysfunctional acts in order to enter temporally-extended processes of moral change. But the paradox of willing surrender of the will requires analysis. The propositional form of it cannot be sustained and must instead give way to willingness as an ongoing choice. The self-reflexivity (...) of the will with which we accomplish this turns out to be a core activity of human activity that seeks openness to moral growth through humility. The paper suggests that self-constitution in this manner this is what freedom is for us and is therefore the source of our hope. (shrink)

The OECD asserts that the role of endogenous growth theory is a key input to research underlying technological processes that enhance productivity. Within neo‐liberal accounts of governance there is a paradoxical explanation of the free self, firstly as one who exercises some type of choice, and secondly as a self constituted through the exercise of choice. Neo‐liberalism, however, does not provide a robust account of self constitution. Foucault's notion of Governmentality therefore is advanced as a more adequate account of the (...) political conditions of self constitution. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the limits of constitutional reform. Some constitutions, for example, the German (art. 79, sec. 3), the Italian (art. 139), the Portuguese (art. 288), the French (art. 89, sec. 5), and the Brazilian (art. 60, sec. 4), contain an “essential core” of rights, which is usually understood as being immune to change. The initial focus in the paper is on the discussion on whether and to what extent these “essential cores” are indeed (...) immune to change. A second focus is on Ross's paradox. Here I analyse and reject Ross's own solution to the paradox and I show, too, that the paradox admits no solution that does not imply a discontinuity in the legal system. (shrink)

This article recovers a largely forgotten and quite surprising argument about the origins of political liberty in Britain: that the Norman Conquest, by making possible an extremely powerful absolute monarchy, paradoxically set in motion the historical process which would later lead to the emergence of limited constitutional monarchy. The article shows how the eighteenth-century writer Jean Louis de Lolme initially made this argument to explain the divergent constitutional orders of Britain and France. De Lolme’s hypothesis was then taken (...) up by numerous historians and political theorists. François Guizot and his fellow Doctrinaires, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill were among the writers who further developed his historical explanation of the British constitution. The liberal philosophy of history in the nineteenth century sprang from De Lolme's account of how absolute monarchy leads paradoxically to constitutional liberty. (shrink)

In the face of the puzzles of material constitution, some philosophers have been moved to posit a distinction between an object's matter and its form. A familiar difficulty for contemporary hylomorphism is to say which properties are eligible as forms: for example, it seems that it would be intolerably arbitrary to say that being statue shaped is embodied by some material object, but that other complex shape properties aren't. Anti-arbitrariness concerns lead quickly to a plenitudinous ontology. The usual complaint is (...) that the super-abundance of material objects is too extraordinary to accept, but I want to raise a different worry: I argue that the most natural way of developing this picture is already inconsistent. I show that a simple version of plenitudinous hylomorphism is subject to a Russellian argument, but argue that we cannot treat the problem straightforwardly as an instance of Russell's Paradox of Sets. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism is the philosophical position that there are no items that have parts. If there are no items with parts then the only items that exist are partless fundamental particles, such as the true atoms (also called philosophical atoms) theorized to exist by some ancient philosophers, some contemporary physicists, and some contemporary philosophers. With several novel arguments I show that mereological nihilism is the correct theory of reality. I will also discuss strong similarities that mereological nihilism has with empirical (...) results in quantum physics. And I will discuss how mereological nihilism vindicates a few other theories, such as a very specific theory of philosophical atomism, which I will call quantum abstract atomism. I will show that mereological nihilism also is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that avoids the problems of other interpretations, such as the widely known, metaphysically generated, quantum paradoxes of quantum physics, which ironically are typically accepted as facts about reality. I will also show why it is very surprising that mereological nihilism is not a widely held theory, and not the premier theory in philosophy. (shrink)

Paradoxes have played an important role both in philosophy and in mathematics and paradox resolution is an important topic in both fields. Paradox resolution is deeply important because if such resolution cannot be achieved, we are threatened with the charge of debilitating irrationality. This is supposed to be the case for the following reason. Paradoxes consist of jointly contradictory sets of statements that are individually plausible or believable. These facts about paradoxes then give rise to a deeply troubling (...) epistemic problem. Specifically, if one believes all of the constitutive propositions that make up a paradox, then one is apparently committed to belief in every proposition. This is the result of the principle of classical logical known as ex contradictione (sequitur) quodlibetthat anything and everything follows from a contradiction, and the plausible idea that belief is closed under logical or material implication (i.e. the epistemic closure principle). But, it is manifestly and profoundly irrational to believe every proposition and so the presence of even one contradiction in one’s doxa appears to result in what seems to be total irrationality. This problem is the problem of paradox-induced explosion. In this paper it will be argued that in many cases this problem can plausibly be avoided in a purely epistemic manner, without having either to resort to non-classical logics for belief (e.g. paraconsistent logics) or to the denial of the standard closure principle for beliefs. The manner in which this result can be achieved depends on drawing an important distinction between the propositional attitude of belief and the weaker attitude of acceptance such that paradox constituting propositions are accepted but not believed. Paradox-induced explosion is then avoided by noting that while belief may well be closed under material implication or even under logical implication, these sorts of weaker commitments are not subject to closure principles of those sorts. So, this possibility provides us with a less radical way to deal with the existence of paradoxes and it preserves the idea that intelligent agents can actually entertain paradoxes. (shrink)

In this moderate realist account of the whole range of issues facing contemporary analytic philosophy, J. K. Swindler aims to fill the gap in the literature between extreme realism and extreme nominalism. He discusses such fundamental concepts as existence, property, universality, individual, and necessity; analyzes the paradoxes of negative existentials and the substitutivity of co-referential terms; and defends objectivity in philosophy. The study moves through three phases: first, an argument that objective philosophical truth is attainable; second, an extended realist analysis (...) of fundamental ontological concepts; and finally, a demonstration of advantages of this ontology over leading alternatives. Weaving: An Analysis of the Constitution of Objects will be of interest to all philosophers working in contemporary philosophy, philosophy of language, logic, and metaphysics, and will serve as an excellent text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in metaphysics. (shrink)

Institutions depend on rules. But on what kind of rules? It has been argued that they depend on constitutive rules, this in contrast to ordinary social practices, which depend on regulative rules instead. The underlying idea is that constitutive rules differ categorically from regulative rules. Against this, I argue that regulative rules can be transformed into constitutive rules by doing little more than introducing a status term. The presence or absence of a status term does not make a difference to (...) whether a social practice qualifies as an institution. In light of this, I propose that, pace Searle, there can be institutions without constitutive rules. Furthermore, even if it sounds somewhat paradoxical, regulative rules can constitute institutions. This implies that the distinction between social practices and institutions cannot be drawn in terms of these two kinds of rules. Following Tuomela, I propose to draw this distinction in terms of social norms instead: in contrast to ordinary social practices, institutions are governed by social norms. Hence, what is distinctive of institutions is that they feature deontic powers. (shrink)

For all post-1970s effort expended on the topic, the most central and important question about vagueness—what it is: what, specifically, something’s being a borderline case of a vague expression consists in—has seldom been tackled with the theoretical explicitness necessary if issues expectably downstream of it, like the nature of valid inference among vague statements, or the Sorites paradox, are to receive a properly motivated treatment. The great interest of Chapter V of The Things We Mean is that it points (...) the way towards a new kind of approach, according to which vagueness is constitutively a psychological phenomenon, grounded in the characteristic propositional attitudes of practitioners of vague discourse. It’s uncontroversial that a vague expression is one whose presence in a sentence contributes towards there being, at least in principle, situations which present borderline cases of its truth; for Schiffer, it is the status of such a situation as a borderline case that is grounded in the characteristic psychology of thinkers who appraise the sentence in that situation. (shrink)

THE PARADOXES OF CONFIRMATION ARE CONSTITUTED BY THE CONTRADICTIONS ARISING FROM THE CONJUNCTION OF THREE PRINCIPLES OF CONFIRMATION - NICOD’S CRITERION, THE EQUIVALENCE CONDITION, AND WHAT THE PAPER CALLS THE SCIENTIFIC LAWS CONDITION. THE PAPER DISCUSSES IN DETAIL THE VARIOUS SOLUTIONS PROVIDED BY ABANDONING ONE OF THE PRINCIPLES. IN THE END IT FINDS NICOD’S CRITERION FALSE, BUT FINDS THE EXPLANATIONS GIVEN BY H.G. ALEXANDER AND OTHERS OF WHY NICOD’S CRITERION IS FALSE THEMSELVES UNSATISFACTORY. IT THEN PROVIDES A MORE ADEQUATE ACCOUNT (...) OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH "RA.BA" CONFIRMS "ALL R’S ARE B". (shrink)

In this article, the author discusses two aspects of the representation of “Europe” as a historical subject that are bound to prove controversial: its relationship to universality, and the conditions of its becoming democratic as a polity. The paradox of “European identity” is that it conceived of itself as the particular site of the invention of the universal and its revelation to the world. A dialectics of recognition through the confrontation with the Other was always involved (above all in (...) the colonial form), but it must pass now from projection to exposure to alterity. In that way a planetary construction of the universal can include a decisive contribution from Europe as one of its “provinces.” Democratizing democracy itself via the invention of a trans-national “co-citizenship” would be an element of this contribution. This is the object of a “material constitution” of Europe already on its way, but still lacking a clear representation of its “constituent power.” Debates on the absence of a European demos and the positive conditions for a federal government have shown that it will require a deconstruction of the notion of “sovereignty of the people,” separating its insurgent dimension from its function as a legitimation of the monopoly of violence, which was closely associated in nation-states with the legal guarantee of individual subjective rights. (shrink)

I present a paradoxical combination of desires. I show why it's paradoxical, and consider ways of responding. The paradox saddles us with an unappealing trilemma: either we reject the possibility of the case by placing surprising restrictions on what we can desire, or we deny plausibly constitutive principles linking desires to the conditions under which they are satisfied, or we revise some bit of classical logic. I argue that denying the possibility of the case is unmotivated on any reasonable (...) way of thinking about mental content, and rejecting those desire-satisfaction principles leads to revenge paradoxes. So the best response is a non-classical one, according to which certain desires are neither determinately satisfied nor determinately not satisfied. Thus, theorizing about paradoxical propositional attitudes helps constrain the space of possibilities for adequate solutions to semantic paradoxes more generally. (shrink)

This paper presents and motivates a new philosophical and logical approach to truth and semantic paradox. It begins from an inferentialist, and particularly bilateralist, theory of meaning---one which takes meaning to be constituted by assertibility and deniability conditions---and shows how the usual multiple-conclusion sequent calculus for classical logic can be given an inferentialist motivation, leaving classical model theory as of only derivative importance. The paper then uses this theory of meaning to present and motivate a logical system---ST---that conservatively extends (...) classical logic with a fully transparent truth predicate. This system is shown to allow for classical reasoning over the full (truth-involving) vocabulary, but to be non-transitive. Some special cases where transitivity does hold are outlined. ST is also shown to give rise to a familiar sort of model for non-classical logics: Kripke fixed points on the Strong Kleene valuation scheme. Finally, to give a theory of paradoxical sentences, a distinction is drawn between two varieties of assertion and two varieties of denial. On one variety, paradoxical sentences cannot be either asserted or denied; on the other, they must be both asserted and denied. The target theory is compared favourably to more familiar related systems, and some objections are considered. (shrink)

Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I use a rather new kind of argument, – one that is based on considerations about Moore's paradox. It shows that if one believes that one believes that p then one believes that p – even though one can believe (...) that p without believing that one believes that p. (shrink)

Given any proposition, is it possible to have rationally acceptable attitudes towards it? Absent reasons to the contrary, one would probably think that this should be possible. In this paper I provide a reason to the contrary. There is a proposition such that, if one has any opinions about it at all, one will have a rationally unacceptable set of propositional attitudes—or if one doesn’t, one will end up being cognitively imperfect in some other manner. The proposition I am concerned (...) with is a self-referential propositional attitude ascription involving the propositional attitude of rejection. Given a basic assumption about what constitutes irrationality, and a few assumptions about the nature of cognitively ideal agents, a paradox results. This paradox is superficially like the Liar, but it is importantly different in that no alethic notions are involved at all. As such, it stands independent of the Liar and is not a ‘revenge’ version of it. After setting out the paradox I discuss possible responses. After considering several I argue that one is best off simply accepting that the paradox shows us something surprising and interesting about rationality: that some cognitive shortfall is unavoidable even for ideal agents. I argue that nothing disastrous follows from accepting this conclusion. (shrink)

Quine's holistic empiricist account of scientific inquiry can be characterized by three constitutive principles: *noncontradiction*, *universal revisability* and *pragmatic ordering*. We show that these constitutive principles cannot be regarded as statements within a holistic empiricist's scientific theory of the world. This claim is a corollary of our refutation of Katz's [1998, 2002] argument that holistic empiricism suffers from what he calls the Revisability Paradox. According to Katz, Quine's empiricism is incoherent because its constitutive principles cannot themselves be rationally revised. (...) Using Gärdenfors and Makinson's logic of belief revision based on epistemic entrenchment, we argue that Katz wrongly assumes that the constitutive principles are *statements* within a holistic empiricist's theory of the world. Instead, we show that constitutive principles are best seen as *properties* of a holistic empiricist's theory of scientific inquiry and we submit that, without Katz's mistaken assumption, the paradox cannot be formulated. We argue that our perspective on the status of constitutive principles is perfectly in line with Quinean orthodoxy. In conclusion, we compare our findings with van Fraassen's [2002] argument that we should think of empiricism as a stance, rather than as a doctrine. (shrink)

Propositions such as are paradoxical, in that even though they can be true, they cannot be truly asserted or believed. This is Moore’s paradox. Sydney Shoemaker has recently ar- gued that the paradox arises from a constitutive relation that holds between first- and second-order beliefs. This paper explores this approach to the paradox. Although Shoemaker’s own account of the paradox is rejected, a different account along similar lines is endorsed. At the core of the endorsed account (...) is the claim that conscious beliefs are always partly about themselves; it will be shown to follow from this that conscious beliefs in Moorean propositions are self-contradictory. (shrink)

Paradox and contradiction constitute the two ways of the world. Polka traces these ideas and the way they have shaped the Western philosophical world view through close readings of Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, and Vico.

Bodily pain strikes many philosophers as deeply paradoxical. The issue is that pains seem to bear both physical characteristics, such as a location in the body, and mental characteristics, such being mind-dependent. In this paper I clarify and address this alleged paradox of pain. I begin by showing how a further assumption, Objectivism, the thesis that what one feels in one’s body when one is in pain is something mind-independent, is necessary for the generation of the paradox. Consequently, (...) the paradox can be avoided if one rejects this idea. However, doing so raises its own difficulties, for it is not obvious how anything can possess all of the features we typically associate with bodily pain. To address this puzzle and finally put the paradox of pain to rest, I develop the Embodied View, a novel metaphysical account on which pains are constitutively mind-dependent features of parts of a subject’s body. (shrink)

Husserl’s first work formulated what proved to be an algorithmically complete arithmetic, lending mathematical clarity to Kronecker’s reduction of analysis to finite calculations with integers. Husserl’s critique of his nominalism led him to seek a philosophical justification of successful applications of symbolic arithmetic to nature, providing insight into the “wonderful affinity” between our mathematical thoughts and things without invoking a pre-established harmony. For this, Husserl develops a purely descriptive phenomenology for which he found inspiration in Mach’s proposal of a “universal (...) physical phenomenology.” To account for applications to any domain, Husserl envisages a theory of all possible deductive systems, which he develops extensively in his Göttingen lectures wherein he engages with Hilbert’s work on deductive systems for geometry, real arithmetic, and physics. This leads Husserl to formulate claims of decidability and proofs of completeness for various arithmetics that result from his analysis of Kronecker’s general arithmetic. Careful attention to these proofs seem to show that Husserl was not oblivious to problems that underlie our incompleteness theorems, namely that of showing that some inversions of his algorithmic arithmetic are undefined. His growing preoccupation with the issue of a pre-established harmony between mathematical thought and reality motivate his pursuit of a “supramathematics” of all possible complete theory forms to demystify such harmony, by having such a form on hand for describing any empirical domain. He soon decides that a transcendental idealism of nature will reveal the wonderful affinity of thoughts and things comprising such harmony, to be a wonderful “parallelism of objective unities and constituted manifolds of consciousness.” But the paradoxes of logic and set theory cloud the clarity of mathematics, which Weyl would restore with Brouwer’s intuitionism and Hilbert with his metamathematics. Husserl informed Weyl that his student Becker had formulated a phenomenological foundation not only for Weyl’s generalization of relativity theory but also for the Brouwer-Weyl continuum. But Weyl eventually rejected much of Becker’s work, especially when it became clear that his phenomenological intuitionism could not account for the success of Hilbert’s transfinite mathematics in quantum physics. Becker responded to this “crisis of phenomenological method” with his mantic phenomenology celebrating the magic of mathematical mysticism, which Husserl finally rejects in favor of a pluralistic phenomenology of mathematics and nature. (shrink)

Most theories of suspense implicitly or explicitly have as a background assumption what I call suspense realism, i.e., that suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion. I claim that for a theory of suspense to entail suspense realism is for that theory to entail a contradiction, and so, we ought instead assume a background of suspense eliminativism, i.e., that there is no such genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. More precisely, I argue that i) any suspense realist (...) (...) theory must resolve the paradox of suspense, ii) if suspense is itself a genuine, distinct emotion, then in order to resolve the paradox of suspense it must be a radically sui generis genuine, distinct emotion, iii) according to any minimally adequate theory of the emotions, there can be no radically sui generis emotion, and so iv) there can be no genuine, distinct emotion that is the emotion of suspense. Quite simply, if a theory of suspense must entail suspense realism, then we ought to be eliminativists about suspense. This I call the Paradox of Suspense Realism, which I take to constitute a productive viability condition for any theory of suspense, i.e., any viable theory of suspense must be mutatis mutandis compatible with suspense eliminativism. (shrink)

For all post-1970s effort expended on the topic, the most central and important question about vagueness—what it is: what, specifically, something’s being a borderline case of a vague expression consists in—has seldom been tackled with the theoretical explicitness necessary if issues expectably downstream of it, like the nature of valid inference among vague statements, or the Sorites paradox, are to receive a properly motivated treatment. The great interest of Chapter V of The Things We Mean is that it points (...) the way towards a new kind of approach, according to which vagueness is constitutively a psychological phenomenon, grounded in the characteristic propositional attitudes of practitioners of vague discourse. It’s uncontroversial that a vague expression is one whose presence in a sentence contributes towards there being, at least in principle, situations which present borderline cases of its truth; for Schiffer, it is the status of such a situation as a borderline case that is grounded in the characteristic psychology of thinkers who appraise the sentence in that situation. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with what relevant literature addresses as the ‘paradox of democracy’ and trace it back to the dialectic between authorization and representation established by social contract theories. To make my argument, I take Rousseau’s Social Contract as a paradigmatic example of the paradox and analyse it in light of Hegel’s critical response. My aim is to show that, although Rousseau rejects the idea of representing the popular will, representation resurfaces in his Republic from top (...) to bottom and engenders a structural opposition between citizens and rulers: drawing on the Hegelian scrutiny of contractarianism, I focus on three key moments in Rousseau’s theory, namely the Lawgiver, the majority rule and the executive power. After illustrating how the social contract undermines democratic participation in deliberative processes, I suggest that Hegel’s philosophy of right overcomes the paradox by positively assuming it as a dialectical contradiction that requires a specific constitutional approach to democracy. In this sense, I argue, the Hegelian perspective on democratic deliberation helps us to better frame Rousseau’s ambition to conceive the Republic as a free community of equals and urges us to elaborate a more coherent understanding of participation in a pluralistic society. (shrink)