In this article, I explore the method of genealogy in moral philosophy, with a focus on evaluating the credibility of moral progress judgments. Despite genealogy becoming a new trend in this field, I critique three types of defective grand narrative genealogies represented by the works of Peter Railton, Michael Huemer, and Nicholas Smyth. I argue that their genealogies fail to be adequate for evaluating moral progress judgments’ credibility. Railton’s genealogy lacks specificity regarding the relatum of the causal story he presents, (...) Huemer’s fails to withstand the scrutiny of historical evidence, and Smyth’s gives no clear verdict on the credibility of the moral progress judgments it explains. These failures, I argue, stem from grand narratives’ neglect of the particularities in each case of moral belief emergence. The disregard for details renders grand narratives generally inadequate for credibility evaluation. Instead, I propose a case study approach that takes into account four types of particulars in each case. I argue that this approach is more methodologically adequate in evaluating the credibility of moral progress judgments since these case-specific details are essential in determining the credibility of a moral belief. (shrink)

Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021) is an insightful deliberation on the layered inequities and asymmetries created by the intersection of colonialism and anthropogenic activities. In The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh conceives the present-day climate and ecological crisis as fallouts of colonial thinking and its manifestations in dominant epistemic and ethical constructions. This article underscores Ghosh’s critique of the Eurocentric discourses for their instrumentality in producing the totalitarian binaries of human and non-human, in which the ‘human’ was always the whites and (...) the ‘non-human’ comprised all ‘others’—the non-whites, indigenous people, nature and ecology. In attributing agency and signifying authority to the white capitalist, this dualistic thinking has always conceived of the ‘others’ as non-humans—those who could be objectified, commodified and tampered with. This article explores how Ghosh repudiates this colonialist monolithic demarcation, which, in compliance with the discourse of the Anthropocene, had annihilated non-Western forms of signification, knowledge and ethics. The article focuses on how the systemic othering of Western modernity’s episteme had been incremental, leading to occurrences of ‘testimonial injustices’ and ‘hermeneutical injustices’—which had culminated in severe forms of epistemicide and unleashed, what Boaventura de Sousa Santos terms ‘cognitive injustice’—relegating indigeneity and ecology to precarious conditions. In accordance with this, this article argues that Ghosh envisages a critical necessity to dismantle the matrix of Western capitalist modernity and its associated narrative of the Anthropocene and claims for a conceptualization of decolonial ecological ethics that would prioritize an encompassing of the episteme produced by the ‘other’. An engagement with the indigenous voices and a restoration of non-Western modes of knowledge production are crucial, as they can offer new ethical dimensions to envision ecology and life with its multiplicities and facilitate ‘cognitive justice’ for the oppressed and unrepresented ‘other’. (shrink)

For several decades, intercultural philosophers have produced an extensive body of scholarly work aimed at mutual intercultural understanding. They have focused on the ideal of intercultural dialogue that is supported by dialogue principles and virtuous attitudes. However, this ideal is challenged by decolonial scholarship as one which neglects power inequalities. Decolonial scholars have emphasized the differences between cultures and worldviews, shifting the focus to colonial history and radical alterity. In return, intercultural philosophers have worried about the very possibility of dialogue (...) and mutual understanding in frameworks that use coloniality as their singular pole of analysis. In this paper, we explore the complex relations between decolonial and intercultural philosophies. While we diagnose tensions between both intellectual discourses, we argue that these tensions turn out to be productive: for intercultural philosophers, decolonial challenges provide an opportunity to critically rethink ideals of equitable dialogue in light of colonial inequity and its deep entrenchment in global philosophical encounters. For decolonial scholars, intercultural philosophies provide an opportunity to sharpen positive proposals of equitable encounters beyond the critique of current forms of colonial domination. Rather than developing a general compromise, we propose a contextualist strategy, highlighting that different situations require different responses that can be strongly confrontational or dialogical in character. Decolonial and intercultural motifs serve different functions in the articulation of a critical global philosophy and can sharpen each other without integrating into a middle ground that is “a little bit intercultural” and “a little bit decolonial”. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to reconceptualise the relationship between politics and sporting practice with the aim of gesturing towards broad themes that a political theory of sport could explore. Many philosophical theories of sport, including the dominant mutualist view, are internalist: they suggest that there is some distinctive logic internal to sports that must feature in the best explanation of our sporting practices. Yet, in attempting to articulate this distinctive internal logic, mutualists quarantine sport from its wider context (...) to understand sporting practice on its own terms. This methodological decision, I argue, invites the unwarranted assumption that sporting practice and politics constitute two separate domains bearing little to no relation to one another. Consequently, mutualism provides us with an impoverished understanding of sporting practice – especially in colonial contexts. Against this view, I use CLR James' writings to show how the internal norms and rules of cricket simultaneously perpetuate an oppressive social structure and articulate the beginnings of an emancipatory political project. This, in turn, has the potential to connect debates within the philosophy of sport to questions around resistance and oppression. (shrink)

A recent article in Anthropology of Consciousness entitled ‘Imaginal research for unlearning mastery: Divination with Tarot as a decolonizing methodology’ argues that the Western Tarot may be a useful tool to facilitate decolonization despite (or perhaps in spite) of the colonial and imperial imprints of the accumulating class. This response points out the Tarot is in fact a tool developed by the accumulating class, designed specifically to facilitate the imposition of elite master narratives. This letter calls into question the appropriateness (...) and effectiveness of using the Tarot as a tool for decolonization. (shrink)

During the early part of the classic Hollywood sound period (1930–60), filmmakers sharpened a standardized way to portray Native American characters in Westerns. Such figures were depicted as disgusting by virtue of being beyond the pale in terms of their “acceptable” moral behavior, as measured by common white sensibilities of the era. This behavior was attributed to their nonwhiteness and therefore presumptively stemmed from their allegedly subhuman, “savage” nature. This stock depiction of Native American characters became one of creatures who (...) communicated by means of silence, war whoops, animal sounds, or unintelligible language, and committed grievous moral transgressions without qualm. In this article I analyze the theoretical structure of such depictions and how these depictions work in terms of typical audience reaction, using recent work in philosophy of film, philosophy of emotion, and cognitive film theory. (shrink)

In this article we develop a taxonomy of emotional injustice: what occurs when the treatment of emotions is unjust, or emotions are used to treat people unjustly. After providing an overview of previous work on this topic and drawing inspiration from the more developed area of epistemic injustice, we propose working definitions of ‘emotion’, ‘injustice’, and ‘emotional injustice’. We describe seven classes of emotional injustice: Emotion Misinterpretation, Discounting, Extraction, Policing, Exploitation, Inequality, and Weaponizing. We say why it is useful to (...) distinguish these and also to subsume them under a single concept. Our aims are both theoretical and practical: to provide a unified account of emotional injustice, while recognizing the diversity of this phenomenon; to facilitate further research on this topic; to recognize the political importance of emotions; and to outline some of the ways in which emotional injustice can be combated. (shrink)

Post-humanism accuses humanism of inventing a human subject who is domineering and destructive. As a remedy, it redefines the human as a being informed by passivity and finitude and bound by ontological vulnerability. In so doing, it undermines the creative and transformative power of human agency and obliterates politics and history as shaped by human actions. Noting how this intensifies the experience of alienation and de-humanisation, the essay looks to Marxist and socialist humanism to resuscitate the idea of humans as (...) agents of history. Humans are not a problem to be overcome; rather, they are the means through which a more viable world can be achieved, for humans and non-humans alike. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the conceptual and methodological points of convergence and divergence of two intellectual currents frequently referred to as the decolonial and ontological turns in social and anthropological theory. Salient points considered are the ways both theoretical projects unsettle modernity’s dominant ontological and epistemological foundations by seriously engaging the conceptual potential of thinking with alterity (ethical dimension) and from exteriority (geopolitical dimension). I compare their subversive methodological contributions, examining, in particular, Enrique Dussel’s analectical hermeneutic approach and Eduardo (...) Viveiros de Castro’s ethnographic method of controlled equivocation. Lastly, I discuss how both theories and approaches complement each other’s efforts to destabilize Western modernity’s philosophical and anthropological foundations. (shrink)

Recently there has been more attention to the cultural aspects of social robots. This paper contributes to this effort by offering a philosophical, in particular Wittgensteinian framework for conceptualizing in what sense and how robots are related to culture and by exploring what it would mean to create an “Ubuntu Robot”. In addition, the paper gestures towards a more culturally diverse and more relational approach to social robotics and emphasizes the role technology can play in addressing the challenges of modernity (...) and in assisting cultural change: it argues that robots can help us to engage in cultural dialogue, reflect on our own culture, and change how we do things. In this way, the paper contributes to the growing literature on cross-cultural approaches to social robotics. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for activists to use the language of colonization or occupation to describe the social dynamics at work in cities undergoing gentrification. Should these claims be regarded as ou...

As technologies of ocean exploitation emerged during the late 1960s, science policy and diplomacy were formed in response to anticipated capabilities that did not match the realities of extracting deep-sea minerals and of resource exploitation in the deep ocean at the time. Promoters of ocean exploitation in the late 1960s envisaged wonders such as rare mineral extraction and the stationing of divers in underwater habitats from which they would operate seabed machinery not connected to the turbulent surface waters. Their promises (...) coincided with others' fears that nuclear weaponry would be placed on the seabed. Those who lacked the technological capability to extract minerals from the seabed also had concerns that other nations would exploit their resources. Scientific imaginaries caused uncertainty in the international community—especially in the “Global South.” The UN called the “Law of the Sea” conferences to mediate emerging geopolitical tensions caused by these imaginaries of exploitation of ocean resources. These conferences became a site where lawmakers projected futures rather than merely responding to past or present dilemmas. Diplomats' negotiations, with their basis in anticipation of the future uses of science and technology, reveal the role of scientific imaginaries within complex negotiations. Here, we see the impact of the distinction (or blurring) of the real and the imagined on the balance of relations between Global North and South increasing global imbalances of resources and power. This article's analysis of such scientific diplomacy provides a valuable example of the power of scientific imaginaries to have a global impact. (shrink)

The Chinese rites controversy is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia—a detailed chronicle of the papal (...) legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in the Acta Pekinensia. (shrink)

This volume has its roots in two recent developments within mainstream analytic epistemology: a growing recognition over the past two or three decades of the active and social nature of our epistemic lives; and, more recently still, the increasing appreciation of the various ways in which the epistemic practices of individuals and societies can, and often do, go wrong. The theoretical analysis of these breakdowns in epistemic practice, along with the various harms and wrongs that follow as a consequence, constitutes (...) an approach to epistemology that we refer to as non-ideal epistemology. In this introductory chapter we introduce and contextualise the ten essays that comprise this volume, situating them within four broad sub-fields: vice epistemology, epistemic injustice, inter-personal epistemic practices, and applied epistemology. We also provide a brief overview of several other important growth areas in non-ideal epistemology. (shrink)

The way Muslims are portrayed in the media is now a very contentious issue. This article makes a preliminary investigation of how the Western media views and responds to Islamic issues with special emphasis being placed upon those Muslims who live as minority groups in predominantly white societies. Much of the contention appears to be based upon cultural norms rather than specific religious doctrinal differences. Thus the historical background as to how the western society has derived its ethical value system (...) through scholars such as Aristotle, Kant and Mill, rather than a combination of ethical and moral values as is the case with Islam is examined. A brief consideration of how ethical and moral values are presented within the Holy Bible and the Holy Qur’ān illustrates this point. In conjunction with this preliminary analysis a number of pertinent articles by modern scholars such as Said, Foreman, Kabir and Cohen have been considered to examine Muslim behavior, particularly within British society and determine if the complaints made by Muslims of media victimization are justified. In conclusion, this article suggests that the media are actually operating within their own concept of ethical boundaries and if Muslims wish to be viewed in a more positive light they must then ‘walk the talk’ they eulogize by actually following more closely the moral and ethical values outlined within the Holy Qur’ān. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the interpretive readings that teenagers from a high socio-economic class offer for one of the most popular reality programs in Israel: Big Brother. The findings of the study demonstrate how the youth completely focused on the ‘ethnic other' in Israel. The dominant interpretations of the participants suggested open use of accounts affiliated with Orientalist discourse. The findings of the study also show that to explain the Orientalist accounts, the youth made dominant use of the neoliberal discourse. The (...) discussion section offers some thoughts on this discursive alliance between the Orientalist and neoliberal discourse. (shrink)

Over the last few years, the idea that we live in a globalized world has significantly gained ground. Across various disciplines, this had led to severe critiques not only of methodological nationalism, but also of methodological Eurocentrism. But what does it mean to leave Eurocentrism behind? What kind of theorizing can and should we engage in when we attempt to provincialize, decenter, or even decolonize our thinking? This article distinguishes, presents, and critically discusses four trajectories beyond Eurocentrism in political and (...) social theory: enlarging the canon, inter-contextual dialogue, taking the impacts of European colonialism and imperialism into account, as well as shifts in theoretical agenda setting. It argues that if political and social theory truly attempts to transcend methodological Eurocentrism, it must not only bring in non-Western thought, but must also critically address both discursive and institutional aspects of global power relations. (shrink)

This article traces the hidden race-religion constellation in Europe. The term “race-religion constellation” refers to the connection or co-constitution of the categories of race and “religion.” Specifically, the term “race-religion constellation” is used to refer to the practice of classifying people into races according to categories we now associate with the term “religion.” This calls for a consideration of European history and forms of racism in Europe, such as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. This article aims to provide an alternative non-secularized or (...) biological account of the origins of the socially constructed category of race in Europe. The alternative story begins in the sixteenth century, when the category of “religion” as a means for classifying peoples was both constructed and politicized. In tracing this alternative story, this article seeks to outline a framework for a critical philosophy of race focused on a European religion line that intersects with Du Bois's color line. (shrink)

To reflect on coloniality is not to study the history of colonialism from the safety of a “postcolonial” present. Rather, it requires one to interrogate ongoing legacies of colonialism, not only in...

Explanations of former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s public and private views on the aetiology of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country remain partial at best without the recognition that the latter presuppose and imply a postmodernist/postcolonialist philosophy of science that erases the line separating the political from the scientific. Evidence from Mbeki’s public speeches, interviews, and private and anonymous writings suggests that it was postmodernist/postcolonialist theory that inspired him to doubt the “Western” scientific consensus on HIV/AIDS and to implement (...) a public health policy that dragged its feet on full roll-out of antiretroviral therapy, causing thousands of avoidable deaths. A weak reductio ad absurdum allows us to conclude from this premise that postmodernist/postcolonial critique of “Western” science ought to be shunned. A comparative argument from consequences further suggests that in a situation where a misguided health policy has lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, and where postmodernist/postcolonialist critique of science can and has been used to justify this policy, an alternative theory ought to be preferred on which such justification would not be possible. The paper closes with a call for a non-relativist alternative to postmodernist/postcolonialist philosophy of science, and evaluates the potential of recent developments in ‘Studies of Expertise” to yield such. (shrink)

The race idea keeps recurring in different guises and yet has an intriguing ‘ever-changing sameness’. Ash Amin has provided an insightful discussion of the question in an earlier issue of this journal. I supplement his account by pointing to the ways in which the nature—culture puzzle identified by Lévi-Strauss creates continuing spaces and seductions for the race idea. I offer an account of the perils of using supposedly ‘natural’ human attributes, as in versions of cognitive anthropology, to explain racism, without (...) completely discounting the idea of human universals. I also explore how ‘race’ retains its continuing hold by intertwining with themes of class, sexuality and nation. I provide an interpretation of racist identities and explain why my account offers both greater pessimism and more optimism than Amin’s more uniform ‘ontological pessimism’. (shrink)

This article commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of The Sociological Imagination by recalling, renewing and updating C. Wright Mills’ pledge to expand a politically aware, self-reflective and publicly accessible intellectual culture between aestheticism and scientism. We begin by sketching how Mills’ ‘bifocal’ vision of the translation between the close-up perspective on personal milieus and the longer view of social structures contrasts with recent calls for a public sociology which would sustain its professional legitimacy while reviving its critical conscience. To illustrate this (...) point, we argue that his project can be reframed in a way that ‘provincializes’ the universalizing claims and scientific aspirations of much of North American sociology by exposing its imperial unconscious in pre- and post-war movements toward the professionalization and scientization of knowledge. Here our focus turns to the prospects for a ‘sociology of empire’ to trace imperial forms which are symptomatically manifested both in the discipline’s assumptions about historical progress and in Mills’ critique of these assumptions. Finally, with an example from the history of British colonialism in Egypt, we show how, despite its blindspots, Mills’ vision of the sociological imagination implicitly projects an alternative ‘sociological map’ with distinct vantage points that can account for the changing cultural tasks of our time, especially concerning how collectives of human and non-human agents are unequally mediated within networks of power. We conclude by revisiting Mills’ distinctive approach to ‘the craft of sociology’, considered more as a prayer than a profession, and undertaken more as a personal and political calling than as career. (shrink)

This article explores the so-called `postsecular' turn from two different but intersecting angles. The first part of the argument offers a reasoned cartography of the postsecular discourses, both in general and within feminist theory. The former includes the impact of extremism on all monotheistic religions in a global context of neo-conservative politics and perpetual war. The context of international violence has dire consequences for the social space, which is increasingly militarized, but also for academic debates, which become more and more (...) restricted in scope and freedom. The article then shifts to mapping the intersection between feminism and the postsecular condition. The main argument is that the postsecular turn challenges European feminism because it makes manifest the notion that agency, or political subjectivity, can be conveyed through and supported by religious piety, and may even involve significant amounts of spirituality. This statement also implies that political agency need not be critical in the negative sense of oppositional and thus may not be aimed solely or primarily at the production of counter-subjectivities. Subjectivity is rather a process ontology of auto-poiesis or self-styling, which involves complex and continuous negotiations with dominant norms and values, and hence also multiple forms of accountability. The double challenge of linking subjectivity to religious agency, and disengaging both from oppositional consciousness and critique defined as negativity, is one of the main issues this article wants to address. In the conclusion the article raises the issue of the affirmative power of critical theory and the kind of ethical values it may be able to engender. (shrink)

There are broadly five interconnected meanings of the noun ‘discipline’. Disciplinawere instructions to disciples, and hence a branch of instruction or department of knowledge. This religious context provided the modern educational notion of a ‘body of knowledge’, or a discipline such as sociology or economics. We can define discipline as a body of knowledge and knowledge for the body, because the training of the mind has inevitably involved a training of the body. Second, it signified a method of training or (...) instruction in a body of knowledge. Discipline had an important military connection involving drill, practice in the use of weapons. Third, there is an ecclesiastical meaning referring to a system of rules by which order is maintained in a church. It included the use of penal methods to achieve obedience. To discipline is to chastise. Fourth, to discipline is to bring about obedience through various forms of punishment; it is a means of correction. Finally there is a rare use of the term to describe a medical regimen in which ‘doctor's orders’ brings about a discipline of the patient. In contemporary society, there is, following the work of Michel Foucault, the notion of increasing personal regulation resulting in a ‘disciplinary society’ or a society based upon carceral institutions. (shrink)

Continuing the dialogue: postcolonial feminist scholarship and Bourdieu — discourses of culture and points of connection Postcolonial feminist theories provide the analytic tools to address issues of structural inequities in groups that historically have been socially and economically disadvantaged. In this paper we question what value might be added to postcolonial feminist theories on culture by drawing on Bourdieu. Are there points of connection? Like postcolonial feminists, he puts forward a position that aims to unmask oppressive structures. We argue that, (...) while there are points of connection, there are also epistemologic and methodologic differences between postcolonial feminist perspectives and Bourdieu's work. Nonetheless, engagement with different theoretical perspectives carries the promise of new insights — new ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘understanding’ that might enhance a praxis‐oriented theoretical perspective in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

This paper explores the common and different cultural globalization experience of the public's everyday lifestyles in seven societies in Asia-Pacific, focusing on the following aspects: connectivity with the world through personal encounters and digital media, English language capacity, support for the forces of globalization, global thinking and concern, the Internet's influences on sociopolitical opinions, appreciation of international food, and national vs. transnational identity. An analysis of survey data is used to contrast public experience of global thinking, global exposure, global diet, (...) and global feelings in two separate developmental states with higher and lower HDI measures in seven Asia-Pacific societies. We demonstrate that individual globalization manifested in everyday life should be understood under a comparative societal perspective as citizens' global experiences are not only a simple matter of personal choice, but are also more a reflection of complex societal conditions. (shrink)

This article argues that the implications of the recent eclipse of the construct of the `primitive' for the practice of the human sciences have not been adequately pondered. It asks, therefore, why and how the myth of primitiveness has been sustained by the human sciences, and what purposes it has served for the modern West's self-understanding. To attempt to answer such a query, the article pursues two principal lines of inquiry. In order to appreciate what is potentially being lost, the (...) space that may be closing up as a result of the death of the `primitive', the first part of the article strives to demonstrate the latter's significance for the self-critique of modern ways of thinking and acting by historiographically reconstructing its changing roles within and representations by the human sciences. In the second section, it is contended that the eclipse of primitiveness has created a potentially problematic situation for the human sciences, since the cross-cultural mode of critique cultivated through this myth risks being neglected in a post-`primitive' age. All in all, then, the article claims that continued engagement with cultural alterity is essential for the human sciences after primitiveness, and that such an engagement can be sustained by an understanding of the different ways in which the `primitive' has been defined and has functioned over the course of the modern era. (shrink)

This paper examines the rhetorical dimension of arguments about global justice. It draws on postcolonial theory, an approach that has explored the relationship between knowledge and power. The global justice literature has elaborated critiques of global inequality and advanced arguments about how to overcome the legacies of domination. These concerns are also shared by critics of colonialism, yet there are also epistemological differences that separate the two scholarly communities. Despite these differences, I argue that bringing the two literatures into conversation (...) generates important benefits. Postcolonial theory draws attention to the way that abstract concepts can function as metaphors that have the unintended consequence of reinforcing power relations. Normative theory will be more effective at promoting global justice if it pays more attention to the politics of representation. (shrink)

The Caribbean is a site where multiple cultures, peoples, waysof thinking and acting have come together and where new formsof philosophy are emerging. The promise of Caribbean philoso-phy lays in its ability to give shape to an intellectual tradition which is both true to and beneficial to Caribbean peoples whilesimultaneously being provocative enough to engage wisdom-seekers of various geographies and identities. I argue that onlyby pursuing a “New Dialogic” which engages the philosophicaltraditions of Africans, African Americans, and Native Ameri-cans can (...) we hope to assert a unique philosophy of value toCaribbean peoples and cultures. The highest form of Caribbeanphilosophy thus must be plural and dialogical. Unfortunately,dialogues in philosophy have been typically characterized bya fixation with Europe, and a lack of consideration of otherphilosophical traditions or sources. The “New Dialogic” thatI propose here involves a more dynamic model of dialogue toopen or intensify different and multiple avenues of conceptualelaboration. I provide general guidelines or principles for this“New Dialogic” and demonstrate the extent to which Caribbeanphilosophers can both contribute to the expansion of this projectand be aided by it in their formulations of the field. (shrink)

Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sensemaking approach, we argue that ethical blindness results from a complex interplay between individual sensemaking activities and context factors.

I report the findings of a comparative analysis of online Christian and Buddhist responses to artificial intelligence. I review the Buddhist response and compare it with the Christian response outlined in an earlier essay (Tamatea 2008). The discussion seeks to answer two questions: Which approach to imago Dei informs the online Buddhist response to artificial intelligence? And to what extent does the preference for a particular approach emerge from a desire to construct the Self? The conclusion is that, like the (...) Christian response, the Buddhist response is grounded not so much in the reality of AI as it is in the discursive constructions of AI made available through Buddhist cosmology, which (paradoxically), like the Christian response, are deployed in defense of the Self, despite claimed adherence to the notion of anatta, or non-Self. (shrink)

Analyses of religious and cultural perspectives on the use of force continue to receive criticism for questionable motives, for insufficient holism, and for exaggerating uniqueness. Claims of recurrent problems educe consideration of interdisciplinary proposals designed to resolve related challenges. Thought together, some suggest that a transversal research program into ethical orientations toward war can facilitate fair and rigorous exploration of crosscultural similarities and differences. Tentative findings emphasizing textual precepts indicate some resonance amid diversity across eleven ethical frameworks including Western just (...) war thinking. Maximizing relevance depends upon expanding the range of orientations and practices studied. Future results might be integrated with knowledge about the influence of other variables to more completely capture the phenomenon of making judgments regarding the use of force in all its manifestations. (shrink)

A critical review of Paul Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge. I argue that the central argument against epistemic relativism fails and that even if the arguments of Fear of Knowledge worked perfectly on their own terms, Fear of Knowledge would fail to persuade the relativistically inclined.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unsaying Life Stories:The Self-Representational Art of Shirin Neshat and GhazelAphrodite Désirée Navab (bio)What connects the two artists in Figures 1 and 2 across time and place? (See pages 40 and 41.) The protagonists seem to be so "at home" in their landscape that they do not stand out as disruptions to a cultural rhythm. They are wearing clothing that symbolizes Iran, and they are in an environment that evokes (...) Iranian art and architecture. In Figure 1, a scene in Shirin Neshat's video Soliloquy (1999), a woman stands near the kind of dome one often sees in Islamic architecture; the compatibility of the curved and the straight lines is striking. The woman is washing herself, possibly in preparation for prayer. Her hands are artistically dyed with henna. Her eyes are closed as the water runs down her face. She seems to be unaware of the camera, involved in a private moment, a purification ritual perhaps. Her clothing, her hands, and the architectural background are all consistent with familiar images of the Middle East. The woman marching in a black chador in a video still by Ghazel (Figure 2) also seems to be quite "at home." The text underneath the image says that both her grandfathers were colonels. This "bothness" is repeated by the text written underneath the image, which appears both in English and in French. She marches to the right of the frame with the straight posture and hint of pants and boots characteristic of a soldier. Like the protagonist in Neshat's video, she neither looks at the camera nor seems to care that it is there. She seems to be re-enacting a private moment of family history.At least, this is what the images say at first glance. Upon closer inspection, the viewer learns that the two protagonists are the artists themselves. They are more than conscious of the camera; they have actually directed these visual narratives. They are posing. This is one role from among many that they could have played. Both artists are native to Iran, but they are [End Page 39] acting in their own productions. They are playing a particular role. They have made the directorial decisions about camera angle and distance, about the time and place, and about the final look of the production. They make images: they are fully aware that they have pictured themselves alongside symbols of Iran. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Shirin Neshat. Soliloquy, 1999, production still.So why are they pretending not to be conscious of the camera? The conscious decisions of the artists point to an issue that is left unsaid but whose absence says a lot. Perhaps, beneath all this effort to seem comfortable, there is discomfort as well. Are these people in fact "at home," or has home become foreign to them? Has this alienation propelled these artists to picture themselves together with readily identifiable, traditional markers of Iranian culture? Are these productions a way of re-negotiating their place with their native land, to find a voice, a space from which to speak?Culturally hybrid persons are often caught in the crossfire of prejudices. For hybrid Iranians, these prejudices are exacerbated by international political tensions that fall along three dimensions of limited visions. They include historical prejudice, where each nation dominates the other in the telling of history; cultural prejudice, stemming from mutual suspicion and ignorance; and political prejudice, as a result of inflexibility, of an unwillingness to [End Page 40] envision the other's view. Art can be a powerful means for challenging the stereotypes of mutually antagonistic nations. In autobiographical art, moreover, artists may use the "telling-self" to "unsay" what has been attributed to them through these stereotypes. By literally and metaphorically engaging the public in seeing alternative realities and histories, these artist-philosophers offer an alternative of historical collaboration, cultural knowledge, and political flexibility. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Ghazel, Me series, 1997–2000, video still.This deconstructive approach to representation is a significant feature of the camera-based work of two contemporary Iranian women artists: Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) and Ghazel (b. 1966... (shrink)

Psychologists are paying increasing attention to a distinction between two ways of thinking. Cognitive psychologists discern between non-reflective “intuitive” and critical reflective “analytic” thinking. Cultural psychologists discern between context-focused “holistic” and object-focused “analytic” thinking. Both find the former strongly correlated with religious beliefs and Asian cultures, the latter with secular beliefs and Euro-American cultures. Yet, recent studies convincingly suggest: first, that analytic thinking does not just relate to secular beliefs but also to alternative beliefs that straddle the boundaries between secular (...) and religious worldviews; second, that critical reflective thinking includes both the holistic context-focus of Asian religions and the analytic object-focus of European philosophies and sciences. This article supports these recent studies in the psychology of religion based on recent studies from the history and sociology of religion and a discourse analysis of interviews with members of a small-scale twenty-first-century spiritual group, as an example. We show that people who identify as spiritual in a metamodern context use both holistic and analytic thinking in creating alternative worldviews, which dialectically reconcile beliefs that many within modern western cultures would consider contradictory. We conclude that this both/and logic challenges theories and stereotypes about “secular versus religious” and “eastern versus western” thinking. (shrink)

This article summarizes a virtual live‐streamed panel event that occurred in August 2020 and was cosponsored by the International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and the University of California, Irvine's Center for Nursing Philosophy. The event consisted of a series of three self‐contained panel discussions focusing on the past, present and future of IPONS and was moderated by the current Chair of IPONS, Catherine Green. The first panel discussion explored the history of IPONS and the journal Nursing Philosophy. The second (...) panel involved a reflection on the challenges of doing nursing philosophy in a research‐intensive context of a Canadian university and the history and current movements in nursing philosophy in the Nordic countries. The final panel involved presentations on the future potential for philosophy in/and for nursing, the critical connections between nursing philosophy and nursing theory, dismantling racism in nursing and the potential for process philosophy to help explore nursing's unique efficacy in creating possibilities for health. The panels were followed by a lively Q&A session with participants, of which there were 252 registrants from across the globe. The event underscored the wide and diverse interests of nurses in philosophical discussion and the need for more virtual events and other connective modalities bringing nurses together to discuss and analyze the value and potential of philosophy to better understand and advance nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

The theoretical and moral bedrock of Western colonialism has been its claim to “universalism.” Central to this universalism is a Cartesian dualism in which only the disembodied mind has access to the universal, and the body, as a mere particular, does not. This paper (Part 1) and the following paper (Part 2) propose an alternative model of “universalism” as the totality of interactions between embodied particulars. This model of “universalism” is based on the relationship between the classical Chinese philosophical concepts (...) of “feeling” (qing, 情), interaction (gan, 感), and the unimpeded free-flow (tong, 通) that results. This Chinese model of universalism is ultimately based on the organicist metaphysics of life that understands meaning and order to be the result of organic interaction between bodies. this paper will show how the dominant Chinese tradition understood the universal as a result of the sympathetic interaction between embodied particulars. (shrink)

Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often prevents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals’ own core (...) principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold ‘unreasonable’, and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even ‘unreasonable’, illiberal citizens may be fair-minded: that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state’s own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals’ own commitments oblige them to address even ‘unreasonable’ political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes. (shrink)

In this interview, Luce Irigaray talks about how two of her latest books, Towards a New Human Being and To Be Born, relate to her wider work and her most well-known theoretical contributions. Iriga...

This essay focuses on the contemporary relevance of Hannah Arendt’s work insofar as it relates to US racism, imperialism, and migration. While Arendt denied that US migration policy and racism were linked or even similar to exercises of racialized sovereignty, totalitarian tactics, and mass displacement in Europe, I suggest that her analyses help us to understand important racialized dialectics between prison and camp, citizen and stateless, and external displacement and internal displacement. In effect, this essay suggests that many of Arendt’s (...) analyses of racism, migration, and camps are more relevant to US history and contemporary US reality than she did or would have admitted. Arendt’s work importantly suggested that the stateless were so rightless that they lacked even criminal rights. In many respects, the criminal-stateless binary accurately illustrates the rightlessness of refugees in contrast to the rights of US citizen-criminals. However, she partly fails to recognize how the dialectical opposition between foreigner and citizen-criminal could lead to less visible forms of overlap and convergence. Arendt’s binary also indicates an adherence to crypto-normativity, despite her professed antifoundational approach to political issues. Together, her theoretical strengths and certain failures illuminate our own (mis)understandings of a set of complex circumstances experienced today. (shrink)

The contribution sheds a critical light on the thirty years since the break-up of socialist Yugoslavia. It presents three hypotheses for a critical reorientation of the 1989–91 sequence. Firstly, rather than seeing 1989 as the start of the longue durée of a democratic process, for Yugoslavia this trajectory was ‘realised’ as political chaos and ethnic wars in 1991. Secondly, criticising the chronological view of ‘post-socialism’, it posits post-socialism as having already emerged after 1965, marked by market reforms that ‘withered away’ (...) socialism. Thirdly, and specific to the 1990s, in order to facilitate the transition to capitalism, a ‘primitive accumulation’ of memory and a high degree of violence unfolded, which actually dis-accumulated the socialist infrastructure and socialised means of (re)production. The post-Yugoslav transition proved a genuine ‘contribution’ to ‘making our country great again’: ethnically cleansed nation-states on the horizon of European peripheral capitalism. The contribution concludes on an affirmative note, pointing to the slow resurgence of the Left. (shrink)

By placing Butler’s Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012) in counterpoint with Said’s After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986), this essay aims to shed new light on Butler’s political and ethical writing, revealing, in particular, the ways in which a politics of cohabitation is inseparable from the process of translation. Both Butler and Said articulate the difficult yet necessary task of establishing a just cohabitation through the translation between two histories of exile, Jewish and Palestinian. Firstly, (...) I examine Butler’s efforts to derive a principle of cohabitation from the Jewish history of diaspora, arguing that it should be understood as a response to Said’s reflections on Jewishness in Freud and the Non-European. I then seek to illuminate how statelessness structures the interplay of text and image in After the Last Sky, arguing that exilic tension provides the framework for Said’s rethinking of comparativism. (shrink)

Recent scholarship increasingly defines Islamophobia as a form of racism. The possibility that Islamophobia could also manifest itself as religious or cultural bigotry is generally overlooked. This article argues that although anti-Islam bigotry is intertwined with anti-Muslim racism, the two are conceptually distinct. Making this distinction allows us to better analyze, unmask, and critically assess Islamophobia. The article conceptually explores the similarities and differences between anti-Muslim racism and anti-Islam bigotry. It finds that although anti-Islam bigotry implies a prejudicial rejection of (...) an essentialized idea of Islam, it understands religion or culture to be an individual choice and allows for the possibility that Muslims convert or assimilate. As such, it differs from anti-Muslim racism, which implies that the Muslim identity and the negative characteristics associated with Islam are innate and unchangeable. The article argues that contemporary Islamophobic political discourse in Europe is predominantly racist, although it hides behind a cloak of anti-Islam bigotry. (shrink)

The twentieth-century rediscovery of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) by scholars such as Erich Auerbach and Isaiah Berlin was partly driven by the profound resonance of his hermeneutics for the valorisation of cultural alterity. Yet the actual content of his philological investigations is often difficult to square with this reading of his thought. The representation of China in his works is a case in point; despite the enthusiasm with which many of his contemporaries in Naples embraced China, Vico seems to view the (...) intellectual and artistic achievements of Chinese civilisation with a certain disdain, characterising Confucianism as a “rough and ungainly” philosophy typical of the most primitive stage of civilisational development. Scholars who have maintained Vico’s contemporary relevance have tried to brush aside his apparent Eurocentrism in favour of his hermeneutics, whereas others have cited his treatment of China as symptomatic of the reactionary nature of his thought. The present study does not deny the importance of China to Vico’s polemic with libertinism but argues that his representation of China is best understood in view of its theological significance to contemporary Jesuit accommodations of Confucianism. (shrink)