"Meritocracy" has historically been understood in two ways. The first is as an approach to governance. On this understanding, we seek to put meritorious (somehow defined) people into public office to the benefit of society. This understanding has its roots in Confucius, its scope is political offices, and its justification is consequentialist. The second understanding of "meritocracy" is as a theory of justice. We distribute in accordance with merit in order to give people the things that they deserve, as justice (...) demands. This understanding has its roots in Aristotle, its scope is social goods broadly, and its justification is deontological. In this article, I discuss the differences--especially the conceptual differences--between these two, prima facie distinct, meritocratic traditions. I also argue that despite their differences Eastern Meritocracy and Western Meritocracy are harmonious. In Section I of the article I introduce the two meritocratic traditions through, in part, a highly abbreviated history of talk about "merit" and "meritocracy" in Chinese and Western philosophy. In Section II, I discuss a number of conceptual issues and partition meritocratic theories in accordance with their scopes and normative justifications. I also discuss two scenarios. In one scenario, Eastern Meritocracy appears to deliver the right result and Western Meritocracy, the wrong result. In the other scenario, vice versa. Finally, in Section III, I argue that Eastern Meritocracy and Western Meritocracy are each special cases of a single, compelling notion of "meritocracy.". (shrink)

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. (...) That gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. (shrink)

Disagreement is a ubiquitous feature of human life, and philosophers have dutifully attended to it. One important question related to disagreement is epistemological: How does a rational person change her beliefs (if at all) in light of disagreement from others? The typical methodology for answering this question is to endorse a steadfast or conciliatory disagreement norm (and not both) on a priori grounds and selected intuitive cases. In this paper, I argue that this methodology is misguided. Instead, a thoroughgoingly Bayesian (...) strategy is what's needed. Such a strategy provides conciliatory norms in appropriate cases and steadfast norms in appropriate cases. I argue, further, that the few extant efforts to address disagreement in the Bayesian spirit are laudable but uncompelling. A modelling, rather than a functional, approach gets us the right norms and is highly general, allowing the epistemologist to deal with (1) multiple epistemic interlocutors, (2) epistemic superiors and inferiors (i.e. not just epistemic peers), and (3) dependence between interlocutors. (shrink)

Rather than answering the broad question, ‘What is a just income?’, in this essay I consider one component of income—economic rent—under one understanding of justice—as giving people what they deserve. As it turns out, the answer to this more focused question is ‘no’. People do not deserve their economic rents, and there is no bar of justice to their confiscation. After briefly covering the concept of desert and explaining what economic rents are, I analyze six types of rent and show (...) that each is unjustified from the point of view of desert. I conclude by drawing some political and economic lessons from the preceding analysis, and by describing how these considerations can create a more just and efficient economy. (shrink)

Politics is rife with motivated cognition. People do not dispassionately engage with the evidence when they form political beliefs; they interpret it selectively, generating justifications for their desired conclusions and reasons why contrary evidence should be ignored. Moreover, research shows that epistemic ability (e.g. intelligence and familiarity with evidence) is correlated with motivated cognition. Bjørn Hallsson has pointed out that this raises a puzzle for the epistemology of disagreement. On the one hand, we typically think that epistemic ability in an (...) interlocutor gives us reason to downgrade our belief upon learning that we disagree. On the other hand, if our interlocutor is under the sway of motivated cognition, then we have reason to discount his opinion. In this paper, I argue that Hallsson's puzzle is solved by adopting a Bayesian approach to disagreement. If an interlocutor is under the sway of motivated cognition, his disagreement should not affect our beliefs--no matter his ability. Because we implicitly and to high accuracy know his beliefs before he reveals them to us, disagreement provides us with no new information on which to conditionalize. I advance a model which accommodates the motivated cognition dynamic and other key epistemic features of disagreement. (shrink)

Sometimes citizens disagree about political matters, but a decision must be made. We have two theoretical frameworks for resolving political disagreement. The first is the framework of social choice. In it, our goal is to treat parties to the dispute fairly, and there is no sense in which some are right and the others wrong. The second framework is that of collective decision-making. Here, we do believe that preferences are truth apt, and our moral consideration is owed not to those (...) who disagree but to the community that stands to benefit or suffer from the decision. In this chapter, I describe and explore these two frameworks. I conclude two things. First, analysis of real-world disagreement suggests that collective decision-making is the right way to model politics. In most, possibly even all, political disagreement, all parties believe (if implicitly) that there is an objective standard of correctness. Second, this matter is connected to the concept of pluralism. If pluralism is true, then collective decision-making cannot be applied to some political disagreements. More surprisingly, pluralism may rule out the applicability of social choice theory as well. (shrink)

Recent political developments cast doubt on the wisdom of democratic decision-making. Brexit, the Colombian people's (initial) rejection of peace with the FARC, and the election of Donald Trump suggest that the time is right to explore alternatives to democracy. In this essay, I describe and defend the epistocratic system of government which is, given current theoretical and empirical knowledge, most likely to produce optimal political outcomes—or at least better outcomes than democracy produces. To wit, we should expand the suffrage as (...) wide as possible and weight citizens’ votes in accordance with their competence. As it turns out, the optimal system is closely related to J. S. Mill's plural voting proposal. I also explain how voters’ competences can be precisely determined, without reference to an objective standard of correctness and without generating invidious comparisons between voters. (shrink)

The proposal on offer is a radical form of egalitarianism. Under it, each citizen receives the same income, regardless of profession or indeed whether he or she works or not. This proposal is bad for two reasons. First, it is inefficient. It would eliminate nearly all incentive to work, thereby shrinking national income and leaving all citizens poorly off (albeit equally poorly off). I illustrate this inefficiency via an indifference curve analysis. Second, the proposal would be regarded as unjust by (...) almost everyone. The empirical work on justice makes this plain. Equal pay for equal work is desirable; equal pay no matter what is something else entirely. It is an idea not likely to find adherents. (shrink)

In "epistocratic" forms of government, political power is wielded by those who possess the knowledge relevant to good policymaking. Some democrats--notably, David Estlund--concede that epistocracy might produce better political outcomes than democracy but argue that epistocracy cannot be justified under public reason. These objections to epistocracy are unsound because they violate a viability constraint: they are also fatal to democracy and all other plausible political arrangements. Moreover, there is a problem with the public reason framework itself--a problem that can only (...) be solved by providing a better definition for what makes an objection to a political arrangement a "reasonable" one. (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that equal opportunity (EO) "strictly dominates" (in the game-theoretic sense) reparations. That is, (1) all the ways reparations would make our world more just would also be achieved under EO; (2) EO would make our world more just in ways reparations cannot; and (3) reparations would create injustices which EO would avoid. Further, (4) EO has important practical advantages over reparations. These include economic efficiency, feasibility, and long-term impact. Supporters of reparations should abandon that (...) ideal to support equal opportunity instead. (shrink)

Conciliatory theories of disagreement require that one lower one’s confidence in a belief in the face of disagreement from an epistemic peer. One question about which people might disagree is who should qualify as an epistemic peer and who should not. But when putative epistemic peers disagree about epistemic peerhood itself, then Conciliationism makes contradictory demands and paradoxes arise.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate, formally, an ambiguity in the exercise of political influence. To wit: A voter might exert influence with an eye toward maximizing the probability that the political system (1) obtains the correct (e.g. just) outcome, or (2) obtains the outcome that he judges to be correct (just). And these are two very different things. A variant of Condorcet's Jury Theorem which incorporates the effect of influence on group competence and interdependence is developed. Analytic (...) and numerical results are obtained, the most important of which is that it is never optimal--from the point-of-view of collective accuracy--for a voter to exert influence without limit. He ought to either refrain from influencing other voters or else exert a finite amount of influence, depending on circumstance. Philosophical lessons are drawn from the model, to include a solution to Wollheim's "Paradox in the Theory of Democracy". (shrink)

A review of Katharina Pistor's *The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality* (2019, Princeton University Press).

Political philosophy has seen vibrant debate over the connection, if any, between liberalism and pluralism. Some philosophers, following Isaiah Berlin, reckon a close connection between the two concepts. Others--most notably John Gray--believe that liberalism and pluralism are incompatible. In this essay, I argue that the puzzle can be solved by distinguishing the responsibilities of liberal states to their peoples from the responsibilities of liberal states to other states. There is an entailment from pluralism to liberalism, and it in turn implies (...) that while liberal states must tolerate "illiberal" lifestyles within their borders, liberal states must not tolerate illiberal states. The fact of liberal intolerance, however, does not justify unreasonably aggressive intervention by liberal states, nor does it mean that illiberal states deserve to be punished. (shrink)

Some people may think that libertarianism and meritocracy have much in common; that the libertarian's ideal world looks like the meritocrat's ideal world; and that the public policies guiding us to each are one and the same. This is wrong in all respects. In this essay I explain why. -/- After providing an overview of meritocratic justice, I argue that meritocracy is a more compelling theory of distributive justice than libertarianism. Meritocracy better protects the core value of personal responsibility; incorporates (...) efficiency-enhancing regulation which libertarianism cannot; provides more positive liberty; and solves salient, real-world debates about distributive justice. (shrink)

A retrospective essay, written for the 125th anniversary of Ethics.

A brief review of Janna Thompson's *Should Current Generations Make Reparation for Slavery?* (2018, Polity Press).

Luc Bovens has recently advanced a novel argument for affirmative action, grounded in the plausible idea that it is hard for an employer to evaluate the qualifications of candidates from underrepresented groups. Bovens claims that this provides a profit-maximizing employer with reason to shortlist prima facie less-qualified candidates from underrepresented groups. In this paper, I illuminate three flaws in Bovens’s argument. First, it suffers from model error: A rational employer does not incur costs to scrutinize candidates when it knows their (...) qualifications with perfect certainty, nor does it refuse to hire better-qualified candidates just because they did not require extra scrutiny. Second, Bovens’s core premise--that there is greater variance in the evaluation of underrepresented candidates than there is the evaluation of other candidates--hurts underrepresented candidates rather than helps them. Third, candidates who are not shortlisted for the reasons Bovens gives have a plausible complaint about unfairness in the hiring process. (shrink)

Martin Ebeling argues that a popular theory in the epistemology of disagreement--conciliationism--supports an egalitarian approach to politics. This view is mistaken for two reasons. First, even if political parties have the epistemic value that Ebeling claims, voters should not regard each other as epistemic peers--which conciliationism requires that they do. The American electorate is strikingly heterogeneous in both its knowledgeability and its rationality, and so the necessary epistemic parity relation does not hold. Second, for technical reasons, the beliefs that a (...) rational voter arrives at after conciliating with his peers do not, in general, accord with the results of egalitarian decision procedures. As its theory currently stands, the epistemology of disagreement does not support egalitarian politics. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in accordance with desert. In this paper, we argue that this is wrong. Desertism conflicts with luck egalitarianism in three important contexts, and, in these contexts, desertism renders the proper moral judgment. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too stingy: it fails to justly compensate people for their socially valuable contributions—when those contributions arose from “option luck”. Second, luck egalitarianism (...) is sometimes too restrictive: it fails to justly compensate people who make a social contribution when that contribution arose from “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism is too limited in scope: it cannot diagnose economic injustice arising independently of comparative levels of justice. The lesson of this paper is that luck egalitarians should consider supplementing their theory with desert considerations. Or, even better, consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. (shrink)

An introduction to the special issue of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics: "On the Very Idea of a Just Wage".

A realist theory of truth for a class of sentences holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar, we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The core of our theory is the (...) account of truthmaking for atomic sentences, in which we expose a pervasive ‘dogma of logical form’, which says that atomic sentences cannot have more than one truthmaker. In contrast to this, we uphold the mutual independence of logical and ontological complexity, and the authors outline formal principles of truthmaking taking account of both kinds of complexity. (shrink)

Philosophers working in the nascent field of ‘experimental philosophy’ have begun using methods borrowed from psychology to collect data about folk intuitions concerning debates ranging from action theory to ethics to epistemology. In this paper we present the results of our attempts to apply this approach to the free will debate, in which philosophers on opposing sides claim that their view best accounts for and accords with folk intuitions. After discussing the motivation for such research, we describe our methodology of (...) surveying people’s prephilosophical judgments about the freedom and responsibility of agents in deterministic scenarios. In two studies, we found that a majority of participants judged that such agents act of their own free will and are morally responsible for their actions. We then discuss the philosophical implications of our results as well as various difficulties inherent in such research. (shrink)

Philosophers often suggest that their theories of free will are supported by our phenomenology. Just as their theories conflict, their descriptions of the phenomenology of free will often conflict as well. We suggest that this should motivate an effort to study the phenomenology of free will in a more systematic way that goes beyond merely the introspective reports of the philosophers themselves. After presenting three disputes about the phenomenology of free will, we survey the (limited) psychological research on the experiences (...) relevant to the philosophical debates and then describe some pilot studies of our own with the aim of encouraging further research. The data seem to support compatibilist descriptions of the phenomenology more than libertarian descriptions. We conclude that the burden is on libertarians to find empirical support for their more demanding metaphysical theories with their more controversial phenomenological claims. (shrink)

This is a review article on Franz Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology published in 1982. We provide a detailed exposition of Brentano’s work on this topic, focusing on the unity of consciousness, the modes of connection and the types of part, including separable parts, distinctive parts, logical parts and what Brentano calls modificational quasi-parts. We also deal with Brentano’s account of the objects of sensation and the experience of time.

Kevin Mulligan has examined in several papers and a book the conceptual relations between the descriptions of mind, language and colours in the philosophies of Brentano’s heirs and the descriptions given later by Wittgenstein. In Chapter 12, he looks at what Bühler and Wittgenstein have to say about the phenomenon of being guided by something and two of their favourite examples – reading and our relations to rules.

The paper seeks to develop an account of indexical phenomena based on the highly general theory of structure and dependence set forth by Husserl in his Logical Investigations. Husserl here defends an Aristotelian theory of meaning, viewing meanings as species or universals having as their instances certain sorts of concrete meaning acts. Indexical phenomena are seen to involve the combination of such acts of meaning with acts of perception, a thesis here developed in some detail and contrasted with accounts of (...) indexicals suggested by Frege, Wittgenstein and by the later Husserl himself in his Ideas I. Implications are drawn also for our understanding of the categorial grammar sketched by Husserl in his 4th Logical Investigation, as also for our understanding of the nature of proper names and other candidate indexical expressions. (shrink)

‘What is characteristic of every mental activity’, according to Brentano, is ‘the reference to something as an object. In this respect every mental activity seems to be something relational.’ But what sort of a relation, if any, is our cognitive access to the world? This question – which we shall call Brentano’s question – throws a new light on many of the traditional problems of epistemology. The paper defends a view of perceptual acts as real relations of a subject to (...) an object. To make this view coherent, a theory of different types of relations is developed, resting on ideas on formal ontology put forward by Husserl in his Logical Investigations and on the theory of relations sketched in Smith's "Acta cum fundamentis in re". The theory is applied to the notion of a Cambridge change, which proves to have an unforeseen relevance to our understanding of perception. (shrink)

Many of the most important questions about primitive certainty have to do with the distinction between primitive certainty as a practical attitude or disposition and primitive certainty as a psychological attitude and with the distinction between these and primitive, objective certainty.

The three young philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith have become well-known in the last few years especially in German-speaking analytical philosophy and phenomenology circles. This is on the one hand as a result of their historical and systematic philosophical work; but it is also because of the provocative way in which they represent their philosophy. Because they often appear in threes, they have become known as the "gang of three" or "three musketeers" or even – and (...) this in an admiring sense – "mafiosi" (Rescher). They are known primarily for the small workshops they have been organizing in uncomplicated Anglo-Saxon manner all over Europe. Their goal has been to show that analytic philosophy as it has been pursued up to now is in need of reform and also that the history of scientific philosophizing is not identical to the history of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy. Above all, they have tried to make more well known the Austrian tradition of scientific philosophy, and they can be given credit for having done much to promote the current interest in this tradition, which means: the history of Austrian philosophy of the 19th and early 20th centuries and its historical context in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (shrink)

Philosophy in the West divides into three parts: Analytic Philosophy (AP), Continental Philosophy (CP), and History of Philosophy (HP). But all three parts are in a bad way. AP is sceptical about the claim that philosophy can be a science, and hence is uninterested in the real world. CP is never pursued in a properly theoretical way, and its practice is tailor-made for particular political and ethical conclusions. HP is mostly developed on a regionalist basis: what is studied is determined (...) by the nation or culture to which a philosopher belongs, rather than by the objective value of that philosopher’s work. Progress in philosophy can only be attained by avoiding these pitfalls. (shrink)

Even the most cursory reader of Husserl’s writings must be struck by the frequent references to essences (“Wesen”, “Essenzen”), Ideas (“Idee”), kinds, natures, types and species and to necessities, possibilities, impossi- bilities, necessary possibilities, essential necessities and essential laws. What does Husserl have in mind in talking of essences and modalities? What did he take the relation between essentiality and modality to be? In the absence of answers to these questions it is not clear that a reader of Husserl can (...) be said to understand him. (shrink)

The answer I shall sketch is not mine. Nor, as far as I can tell, is it an answer to be found in the voluminous literature inspired by Kripke’s work. Many of the elements of the answer are to be found in the writings of Wittgenstein and his Austro-German predecessors, Martinak, Husserl, Marty, Landgrebe and Bühler. Within this Austro-German tradition we may distinguish between a strand which is Platonist and anti-naturalist and a strand which is nominalist and naturalist. Thus Husserl’s (...) account of what he calls “directly referring” uses of singular terms invokes senses or individual concepts, albeit simple, not descriptive senses. But the account of reference fixing and reference given by Landgrebe, Bühler and Wittgenstein rejects senses.1 I confine further reference to these writers to footnotes since my aim here is to develop and unify some of their suggestions, in particular by comparing them with more recent work (cf. Mulligan 1997). (shrink)

Batı’da teorik felsefe; Analitik Felsefe (AF), Kıta Felsefesi (KF) ve Felsefe Tarihi (FT) olmak üzere üçe ayrılır. Fakat üçünde de işler yolunda değildir. AF, felsefenin bir bilim olabileceği iddiasından kuşku duyduğu için gerçek dünyayla ilgilenmiyorken başından beri uygun bir teorik yöntem izlemeyen Kıta Felsefesinin uygulanışı, belirli politik ve etik yargılara hizmet edecek şekilde özelleştirilmiştir. FT çalışmalarının gidişatı ise eldeki eserin nesnel değerinden daha çok ilgili filozofun ait olduğu ulus veya kültüre göre bölgesel bir temelde gelişmiştir. Felsefede ilerleme sağlanacaksa bu ancak (...) bahsi geçen tuzaklardan kaçınılarak gerçekleşebilir. (shrink)

Emotions are said to be moral, as opposed to non- moral, in virtue of their objects. They are also said to be moral, for example morally good, as opposed to immoral, for example morally bad or evil, in virtue of their objects, nature, motives, functions or effects. The definition and content of moral matters are even more contested and contestable than the nature of emotions and of other affective phenomena. At the very least we should distinguish moral norms, moral obligations, (...) moral right and wrong, moral values and moral virtues. And different accounts of morals and of morality understand norms, values and virtues and their interrelations in different ways. For example, such accounts disagree about the relation between moral and non- moral oughts, the relation between moral and non- moral values, and the relation between moral and intellectual virtues ; and about the moral weight to be attached to self-regarding attitudes and behaviour and other-regarding attitudes and behaviour. Thus we may expect the range of putative moral emotions to display a bewildering variety. (shrink)

Ernst Mach's atomistic theory of sensation faces problems in doing justice to our ability to perceive and remember complex phenomena such as melodies and shapes. Christian von Ehrenfels attempted to solve these problems with his theory of "Gestalt qualities", which he sees as entities depending one-sidedly on the corresponding simple objects of sensation. We explore the theory of dependence relations advanced by Ehrenfels and show how it relates to the views on the objects of perception advanced by Husserl and by (...) the Gestalt psychologists. (shrink)

Als zu Beginn des Jahrhunderts der Realismus wieder ernst genommen wurde, gab es viele Philosophen, die sich mit der Ontologie der Wahrheit befaßten. Unabhängig von der Bestimmung der Wahrheit als Korrespondenzbeziehung wollten sie herausfinden, inwieweit zur Erklärung der Wahrheit von Sätzen besondere Entitäten herangezogen werden müssen. Einige dieser Entitäten, so zum Beispiel Bolzanos ‘Sätze an sich’, Freges ‘Gedanken’ oder die ‘propositions’ von Russell und Moore, wurden als Träger der Eigenschaften Wahrheit und Falschheit aufgefaßt. Einige Philosophen jedoch, wie Russell, Wittgenstein im (...) ›Tractatus‹ und Husserl in den ›Logischen Untersuchungen‹, argumentierten, zusätzlich zu den Wahrheitsträgern bzw. an ihrer Stelle müßten Entitäten angenommen werden, auf Grund deren Sätze und/oder ‘Propositionen’ wahr sind. Solchen Entitäten gab man verschiedene Namen, insbesondere ‘fact’, ‘Tatsache’, ‘state of affairs’ und ‘Sachverhalt’. 1 Wir wollen einer Entscheidung über die Angebrachtheit dieser Ausdrücke nicht vorgreifen und daher zunächst eine neutralere Terminologie verwenden: Alle Entitäten, die für diese zweite Rolle in Frage kommen, wollen wir ‘Wahrmacher’ nennen. (shrink)

Was heisst – eigentlich -“unecht”? Was sind unechte Gefühle? Das Unechte gehört zur grossen Familie des Falschen - der Lüge, der Verlogenheit, der Unwahrhaftigkeit, der Unaufrichtigkeit, der Heuchelei, der Hypokrisie, des Hohlens, zur Familie von «phoniness», «humbug», «bullshit » und «cant». Aber wo gehört es hin?

Attribuiamo l’esercizio dell’immaginazione a ogni genere di persona, in ogni tipo di circostanza e per ogni sorta di ragione. Le ipotesi e gli esperimenti men- tali dello scienziato, le visioni del folle, le fantasie quotidiane, le costruzioni del metafisico, il romanzo – sia per quanto riguarda l’autore che per quanto riguar- da il lettore –: in ognuno di questi casi riconosciamo di solito l’attività dell’im- maginazione. Così, tutto sembra indicare che l’unità dell’immaginazione sia qualcosa di davvero labile, se non addirittura (...) un’illusione. (shrink)

The relations between Searle, Derrida, CP and phenomenology are complex. The writings of Derrida, the most influential figure within CP, are inseparably bound up with phenomenology and with the transformation of phenomenology effected by Heidegger. Indeed a large part of CP grew out of phenomenology. It has often been claimed that Searle's own contributions to the philosophy of mind advance claims already put forward by the phenomenologists, and Searle himself has given his own account of phenomenology, in particular of the (...) role of idealism in phenomenology. In what follows I argue that the preoccupations of early phenomenology are often those of later analytic philosophers - a point that remains invisible so long as phenomenology is looked at from the point of view of what phenomenology became - but that Searle's philosophy of mind differs on most central points from that given by Husserl. On the other hand, Searle's criticisms of Derrida and of the philosophical parts of postmodernism do indeed have much in common with the criticisms put forward by the early phenomenologists and by Husserl himself of what they saw as phenomenology's gradual transformation and degeneration and of related irrationalisms. A grasp of these similarities will suggest the beginnings of an answer to the question why Searle's anti-Derridas and anti-postmodernisms are such splendidly isolated examples of the genre. (shrink)

The magisterial analyses of logic and meaning advanced in Husserl's Logical Investigations of 1900/01 have for a number of reasons been neglected by analytical philosophers in subsequent decades. This state of affairs has to do, in part, with the history of the editions and translations of Husserl's writings. Findlay's readable but imperfect translation appeared seventy years after the work itself was first published, and the editors and translators and expositors of Husserl's works have reflected the prevailing philosophical atmosphere on the (...) Continent by concentration their energies on Husserl's later writings. Now, however, over eighty years after the appearance of Husserl's one true masterpiece, a critical edition of the work is at last available in completed form. We here analyze the structure and content of this new edition, published as part of the Husserliana series by the Husserl Archive in Louvain. (shrink)

La philosophie analytique est, dit-on, an-historique, anti-historique même. Elle s’est souvent présentée comme marquant une rupture avec le passé. L’attitude inspirant la question rhétorique que pose Wittgenstein dans les Carnets, « Was geht mich die Geschichte an ? », est répandue. Les multiples liens entre la réalité historique et l’anthropologie philosophique qui ont fasciné les philosophes depuis Hegel jusqu’à Dilthey, Heidegger, Adorno et Habermas – l’évolution historique, les dimensions historiques de l’éthique, de la politique, l’histoire de l’individu et les deux (...) philosophèmes qu’elle englobe : la Vie et la Mort – y sont singulièrement absents, absents tout court (pas dans le sens parisien du mot). (shrink)

Musil wollte der Versuchung widerstehen, der Mohammed seiner eigenen Ideen zu sein. Ich möchte heute diese Rolle übernehmen, Musils Mohammed zu sein, ich werde dieser Versuchung nachgeben. Musils großartige Philosophie und insbesondere ihr Herzstück, die Analyse des Gefühls, ist, als philosophische Leistung, nie richtig eingestuft worden. Und zwar, weil sie thematisch eng zusammenhängt mit zwei philosophischen Traditionen, der einen, die er teilweise gekannt hat - der deskriptiven Psychologie von Brentano, Meinong, Höfler, Baley, Stumpf, Husserl, Scheler und den Gestalt-Psychologen - der (...) anderen, die er nicht kennen konnte - der analytischen philosophy of mind nach Wittgenstein. Nun, deutschsprachige Philosophen kennen die erste kaum, da sie thematisch und methodologisch meilenweit entfernt von den Anliegen Meister Eckharts und Kants ist, und anglophone Philosophen kennen Musil kaum, da die Druckfahnenkapitel und die Essays ihnen kaum zugänglich (gewesen) sind. (shrink)

Che cos'è la stoltezza? ... Questo libro si apre con il mio tentativo di capire la stoltezza. Seguono quattro capitoli che esplorano quanto di buono si possa imparare da altri tentativi di capire la stoltezza. Il mio tentativo affonda le radici nel fascino, che subisco ormai da lungo tempo, per il ruolo che una serie di ideali intellettuali, come la chiarezza e la precisione, giocano dapprima nel pensiero austriaco e poi nella filosofia analitica.

Ernst Mach's atomistic theory of sensation faces problems in doing justice to our ability to perceive and remember complex phenomena such as melodies and shapes. Christian von Ehrenfels attempted to solve these problems with his theory of "Gestalt qualities", which he sees as entities depending one-sidedly on the corresponding simple objects of sensation. We explore the theory of dependence relations advanced by Ehrenfels and show how it relates to the views on the objects of perception advanced by Husserl and by (...) the Gestalt psychologists. (shrink)

The idea of artificial intelligence for social good is gaining traction within information societies in general and the AI community in particular. It has the potential to tackle social problems through the development of AI-based solutions. Yet, to date, there is only limited understanding of what makes AI socially good in theory, what counts as AI4SG in practice, and how to reproduce its initial successes in terms of policies. This article addresses this gap by identifying seven ethical factors that are (...) essential for future AI4SG initiatives. The analysis is supported by 27 case examples of AI4SG projects. Some of these factors are almost entirely novel to AI, while the significance of other factors is heightened by the use of AI. From each of these factors, corresponding best practices are formulated which, subject to context and balance, may serve as preliminary guidelines to ensure that well-designed AI is more likely to serve the social good. (shrink)

Suppose that realism about values is true, that there are objects and states of affairs which are intrinsically valuable, that some objects and states of affairs are intrinsically more valuable than others and that some objects and states of affairs are intrinsically valuable for Sam, and others for Maria.

Robert Musil (1880-1942), the Austrian writer, essayist and author of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (MoE), and Max Scheler (1874-1928), the south German realist phenomenologist, shared a number of philosophical convictions and interests. These convictions and interests distinguish them from almost all their contemporaries. They are by no means common today although more common than they were. At the centre of their work stand detailed anatomies of the human heart.

Schelers Anatomie des Herzens ist neben derjenigen seines Zeitgenossen Shand, die gründlichste, die das zwanzigste Jahrhundert vorzuweisen hat. Sie ist aufs Engste mit einer Ontologie, einer Metaphysik, einer Erkennt- nis- und Wahrnehmungslehre, einer Wert- und Normenlehre, einer Analy- se des Strebens, Überlegens, Wählens und Handelns, einer Sozialphiloso- phie und einer Anthropologie verwachsen. Aufgrund der deskriptive Klarheit und Vielfalt, die sie über weite Strecken auszeichnen, kann sie aber auch unabhängig von diesen Verbindungen betrachtet werden.

Toutes les propriétés sont-elles sur un pied d’égalité ? Selon une réponse populaire, toutes les propriétés ne sont pas également fondamentales : certaines sont fondamentales ou rares (« sparses »), tandis que d’autres ne le sont pas. Une version de cette réponse soutient que les propriétés fondamentales sont les propriétés causalement efficaces. Une autre version soutient que les propriétés fondamentales sont des entités temporelles ou même des forces ou des pouvoirs. Une autre version encore soutient que les propriétés positives, contrairement (...) aux propriétés négatives ou disjonctives, sont fondamentales. (shrink)