Harry Frankfurt’s Unwilling Addict and Willing Addict cases accomplish something fairly unique: they pull apart the predictions of control-based views of moral responsibility and competing self-expression views. The addicts both lack control over their actions but differ in terms of expression of their respective selves. Frankfurt’s own view is that—in line with the predictions of self-expression views—the unwilling addict is not morally responsible for his drug-directed actions while the willing addict is. But is Frankfurt right? In this essay, I put (...) together a systematic defence of Frankfurt’s position. (shrink)

According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression account that addresses these issues. The (...) account is composed of two parts. The first part answers the question, What is a deep self? Theorists have tended to favor cognitive views that understand the deep self in terms of rationally formed evaluative judgment. I propose instead a conative view that says one’s deep self consists of a distinctive kind of pro-attitude, cares, and I provide an account of cares in terms of their distinctive psychological functional role. The second part answers the question, When does an action express one’s deep self? I criticize the agentially demanding conditions set out in existing views and propose a more minimalist alternative. I show that the Self-Expression account handles issues that bedeviled traditional deep self views, including how to explain moral responsibility for spontaneous, out of character, and weak-willed actions. (shrink)

In his recent work, "The Collapse of the Fact-Value Dichotomy," Hilary Putnam traces the history of the fact-value dichotomy from Hume to Stevenson and Logical Positivism. The aim of this historical reconstruction is to undermine the foundations of the dichotomy, showing that it is of a piece with the dichotomy - untenable, as we know now - of "analytic" and "synthetic" judgments. Putnam's own thesis is that facts and values are "entangled" in a way that precludes any attempt to draw (...) a sharp distinction between "value judgments" and "matters of fact." The idea of an "entanglement of facts and values" Putnam rightly attributes to John Dewey, who - we should add - made of it the main issue in his controversy with Logical Positivism. Nevertheless, a closer inspection of the problem whose history Putnam summarizes could bring into light important aspects of it that have been neglected. It is worth reading in this connection the intercourse between Dewey and Stevenson. Secondly, it is striking that Putnam's version of the history of the fact-value dichotomy hardly mentions the problem that caused this very dichotomy to arise in the first place: i. e., the problem of insoluble moral disagreements. By contrast, Dewey's attack on the dualism of fact and value can be read as an attempt to redescribe this kind of disagreements in a way that makes room for intelligent inquiry, and consequently for rational expectations of agreement. The "entanglement thesis" surely is a part of this re-description. But then it must have implications - particularly for the analysis of value-justification - which are overlooked, or by-passed, by Putnam. This leaves the question open whether Putnam and Dewey subscribe to different versions of pragmatism with regard to norms and values. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning interest in new and more complex accounts of the organism-environment dyad by biologists and philosophers, little attention has been paid in the resulting discussions to the history of these ideas and to their deployment in disciplines outside biology—especially in the social sciences. Even in biology and philosophy, there is a lack of detailed conceptual models of the organism-environment relationship. This volume is designed to fill these lacunae by providing the first multidisciplinary discussion of the topic of organism-environment (...) interaction. It brings together scholars from history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, medicine, and biology to discuss the common focus of their work: entangled life, or the complex interaction of organisms and environments. (shrink)

This article constructs a theory of moral cultivation from the writings of John Dewey. Examining his early work in ethics, I argue that the goal of moral cultivation for such a Deweyan scheme is an individual who is attentive and engaged with the particulars of her situation. I then sketch an account of art's moral value and its connection to attentiveness, intimating a way to dissolve longstanding problems in the philosophy of art.

Defining “criticism” is a simple—but bedeviling—task. No less a critic and theorist than Edwin Black begins with the simple statement that “criticism is what critics do.” While he admits that this seems like an empty definition, Black does note that it has one redeeming feature—“It compels us to focus on the critic” (1978, 4). Criticism and those who engage in it are integrally connected, and any account of critical activity must deal with both the activity and its actor. In this (...) way, it is much like art—one could easily utter that “art is what artists do.” Criticism is often tied to art and its products, so this appears to be a fair way to proceed in an investigation of criticism. Yet I would argue .. (shrink)

: This paper describes John Dewey's attitude regarding the potential for the social studies as a vehicle for citizenship education. During the 1930s, Dewey specifically addressed his concerns for teaching social studies in two articles. By situating these concerns within his framework for democratic education, he outlines the potential for creating participatory citizens. This goal for citizenship education is still relevant today, especially given the current political climate.

In this dissertation, I argue for a new conception of the epistemic condition on moral responsibility.

We identify a normative paradox of responsible management education. Business educators aim to promote social values and develop ethical habits and socially responsible mindsets through education, but they attempt to do so with theories that have normative underpinnings and create actual normative effects that counteract their intentions. We identify a limited conceptualization of freedom in economic theorizing as a cause of the paradox. Economic theory emphasizes individual freedom and understands this as the freedom to choose from available options. However, conceptualizing (...) individuals as profit-maximizing actors neglects their freedom to reflect on the purposes and goals of their actions. We build on the work of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who distinguishes between habitualized and creative problem-solving behaviors, conceptualizes knowledge construction as a process of interdependent scientific social inquiry, and understands actors as having the freedom to determine what kind of people they wish to be. We apply pragmatist theory to business education and suggest equipping students with a plurality of theories, supplementing neoclassical economics with other economic perspectives and views from other disciplines on economic behavior. Moreover, we suggest putting students into learning situations that require practical problem solution through interdependent social inquiry, encouraging ethical reflection. In doing so, we contribute by linking the problematic conceptions of freedom identified in economic theorizing to the debate on responsible management education. We conceptualize a pragmatist approach to management education that explicitly re-integrates the freedom to discursively reflect on the individual and societal purpose of business activity and thereby makes existing tools and pedagogies useful for bringing potential freedom back into business. (shrink)

What does evaluation mean? This article examines the evaluative process as a practical judgment that links a situation to a set of values in order to decide upon a course of action. It starts by discussing A. Sen’s “relational” and “comparative” account of evaluation, built in critical dialogue with J. Rawls’ deductive theory. Comparison, incompleteness, reality, and deliberation are the key principles of Sen’s approach, which, in some respects, echoes that of J. Dewey. The second part shows the relevance of (...) completing Sen’s approach with Dewey’s pragmatism, since Dewey’s emphasis on practical judgment is a useful counterbalance to Sen’s focus on evaluation as a cognitive process. Dewey introduces a shift from values to valuation and draws a distinction between prizing and appraising, which makes the logic of inquiry and the search for consistency between means and ends in a given situation the fulcrum of evaluation. The third part of this paper addresses the relationship between values and norms in evaluative processes. Neither Sen nor Dewey deals with this question in a systematic way, although norms, which are both similar and different from values, contribute to frame evaluations in different ways: as horizons, resources, or constrains. Bringing norms into the picture means completing the pragmatist account with an institutionalist perspective, as we suggest through the example of the evaluation of work. (shrink)

Empirical neuroethics models have always had normative ambitions. Older models attempted to debunk traditional moral theories, whereas newer models attempt to fit their empirical and normative claims with them. The issue of normative significance as it pertains to the use of social science methodology on moral intuitions remains open. This paper analyzes the Is/Ought gap and the empirical underpinnings of influential constructivist approaches in order to argue that the normative ambitions of empirical neuroethics models are not necessarily always misguided. The (...) author clarifies how legitimate normative implications can be dissociated from overreaches and argues that moral intuitions could be used as the factual basis for ethics by employing the distinction between natural facts, social facts, and social constructs. Ultimately, morality can be fruitfully studied and informed by natural and social sciences and, thorough ethical reflection, ought also to inform empirical research. (shrink)

This essay explores the conception of the individual in Dewey's democratic writings. Following Dewey's lead, I argue that it is human individuality, including our impulses, habits, and capacities, along with an appropriate environment, that represents the uniqueness and power of every individual. In achieving our individuality, we form habits to live and to grow; we strive toward a fully realized human being, while we perform a unique function in keeping the community growing. Dewey's theory of self-construction provides a theoretical foundation (...) for an active-individual as-a-societal-contributor-always-in-the -making that in turn contributes to the improvement of educational opportunities for all people. (shrink)

The American pragmatist John Dewey was no stranger to the problems of economics and their effects on the quality of work experience. Indeed, in his Democracy and Education (1916/1985), he remarks that “the greatest evil of the present regime is not found in poverty and in the suffering which it entails, but in the fact that so many persons have callings which make no appeal to them, which are pursued simply for the money reward that accrues” (MW 9:326–27). This was (...) not a uniquely American problem, as he continued to discuss the “problem of labor” in his lectures in China from 1919 to 1921. There his analysis of education and what it has to contribute to capitalistic economies takes on a more comparative shade .. (shrink)

This paper argues for the pragmatic construction of Confucian democracy by showing that Chinese philosophers who wish to see Confucianism flourish again as a positive dimension of Chinese civilization need to approach it pragmatically and democratically, otherwise their love of the past is at the expense of something else Confucius held in equal esteem, love of learning. Chinese philosophers who desire democracy for China would do well to learn from the earlier failures of the iconoclastic Westernizers, and realize that a (...) Chinese democracy cannot come about by ignoring or dismissing such an important part of China's history, its Confucian tradition. The best chances for democracy in China lie in transforming that tradition without destroying it. Eagerness to learn from others must be united with a proper appreciation of one's own past to nurture democracy as a way of life. (shrink)

In his action theory, John Dewey makes use of the concept of capability to highlight the way human capacities depend on the environment and the character of an agent. In his capability approach, Amartya Sen likewise refers to the environment by discussing the role of conversion factors. Yet, he abstains from a discussion of character development, presumably in order to allow for a variety of conceptions of the good and ways in which characters can develop. In this paper, I develop (...) the outlines of a pragmatist capability theory by enriching the core concepts of Sen’s capability approach with the Deweyan notions of habit and character. In this way, the role of the environment in the capability approach can be reaffirmed and supplemented by a notion of character development. Subsequently, I explore the implications of this framework for Sen’s notions of impartiality and freedom. The result is a pragmatist capability theory which builds on Sen’s conceptual framework and puts additional emphasis on character development and sensitivity to one’s environment. (shrink)