Bob Fischer has written a reply to my article ‘Animal Abolitionism and ‘Racism without Racists’’. In this article, Fischer contends that my arguments whereby animal abolitionism engages in acts of racism without racists are mistaken. I wish to reply to Fischer’s objections in this article, through four sets of contentions: Fischer’s arguments reveal some misunderstandings in terms of the concept of racism and, particularly, of ‘racism without racists’; his arguments also underestimate the burdens suffered by individuals who wish to become (...) vegan; Fischer’s views on infantilisation lead to counter-intuitive conclusions; and Fischer’s counter-argument against my neo-colonial critique of abolitionism misunderstands the points made in my previous article. (shrink)

The following reviews recent developments in the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion, and argues for an adaptationist stance.

First published in the International Encyclopaedia of Social and Behavioural Sciences (Pergamon Press, 2001); reprinted in the 2nd edition (2015). An overview of different justifications of multiculturalism in contemporary political theory, as well as various challenges to and critiques of those arguments.

In the face of longstanding philosophical debates on the nature of hatred and an ever-growing interest in the underlying social-psychological function of group-directed or genocidal hatred, the peculiar affective intentionality of hatred is still very little understood. By drawing on resources from classical phenomenology, recent social-scientific research and analytic philosophy of emotions, I shall argue that the affective intentionality of hatred is distinctive in three interrelated ways: it has an overgeneralizing, indeterminate affective focus, which typically leads to a form of (...) collectivization of the target; short of a determinate affective focus, haters derive the indeed extreme affective powers of the attitude not in reaction to any specific features or actions of the targets or from some phenomenological properties of the attitude but, rather, from the commitment to the attitude itself; finally, in sharing this commitment to hate with others, hatred involves a certain negative social dialectics, robustly reinforces itself and becomes entrenched as a shared habitus. (shrink)

Models of ethnic violence have primarily been descriptive in nature, advancing broad or particular social and political reasons as explanations, and neglecting the contributions of individuals as decision-makers. Game theoretic and rational choice models recognize the role of individual decision-making in ethnic violence. However, such models embrace a classical economic theory view of unbounded rationality as utility-maximization, with its exacting assumption of full informational access, rather than a model of bounded rationality, modeling individuals as satisficing agents endowed with evolved domain-specific (...) competences. A newer theoretical framework hypothesizing the existence of a human coalitional psychology, an evolved domain of competence, allows us to make sense of core features of memorial narratives about ethnic violence. Qualitative data from the interviews of fifty-seven participants who were impacted by the Croatian Homeland War support expectations entailed by a coalitional psychology model of ethnic strife. (shrink)

Genocide is the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, of a people. Typically, it is a crime that is committed by a people. In this essay, I propose an analysis of the concept of an ethnic identity group, which is, I argue, the concept of ethnicity at issue in many important discussions of group rights, group acts, and the moral responsibility of group members for the acts of the groups to which they belong. I develop the account of collective (...) agency presupposed by this analysis and explore its implications for assessments of individual moral responsibility for genocide. I argue, further, that among other advantages over culturalist approaches to questions about group rights, the approach that follows from the concept of an ethnic identity group sheds light on the specific moral wrong of genocide. I reply to individualist objections to the idea that ethnic group membership may be morally significant and argue that morally adequate responses to genocide presuppose acknowledgment of the fact that groups act and are acted upon in morally significant ways. (shrink)

Our research brings to light features of the social world that impact moral judgments and how they do so. The moral vignette data presented were collected in rural and urban Croatian communities that were involved to varying degrees in the Croatian Homeland War. We argue that rapid shifts in moral accommodations during periods of violent social strife can be explained by considering the role that coordination and social agents' ability to reconfigure their social network (i.e., relational mobility) play in moral (...) reasoning. Social agents coordinate on (moral) norms, a general attitude which broadly facilitates cooperation, and makes possible the collective enforcement of compliance. During social strife interested parties recalibrate their determination of others' moral standing and recast their established moral circle, in accordance with their new or prevailing social investments. To that extent, social coordination—and its particular promoters, inhibitors, and determinants—effects significant changes in individuals' ranking of moral priorities. Results indicate that rural participants evaluate the harmful actions of third parties more harshly than urban participants. Coordination mediates that relationship between social environment and moral judgment. Coordination also matters more for the moral evaluation of the harmful actions of moral scenarios involving characters belonging to different social units than for scenarios involving characters belonging to the same group. Participants high in relational mobility—that ability to recompose one's social network—moralize similarly wrongdoings perpetrated by both in- and out-group members. Those low in relational mobility differentiate when an out-group member causes the harm. Additionally, perceptions of third-party guilt are also affected by specifics of the social environment. Overall, we find that social coordination and relational mobility affect moral reasoning more so than ethnic commitment. (shrink)

Analyzing Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations, Myers provides a point-by-point discussion of his theory, concluding that the relevance of realism will be seen particularly in the search for a new balance of power in the post-Cold War world.

In the face of longstanding philosophical debates on the nature of hatred and an ever-growing interest in the underlying social-psychological function of group-directed or genocidal hatred, the peculiar affective intentionality of hatred is still very little understood. By drawing on resources from classical phenomenology, recent social-scientific research and analytic philosophy of emotions, I shall argue that the affective intentionality of hatred is distinctive in three interrelated ways: it has an overgeneralizing, indeterminate affective focus, which typically leads to a form of (...) collectivization of the target; short of a determinate affective focus, haters derive the indeed extreme affective powers of the attitude not in reaction to any specific features or actions of the targets or from some phenomenological properties of the attitude but, rather, from the commitment to the attitude itself; finally, in sharing this commitment to hate with others, hatred involves a certain negative social dialectics, robustly reinforces itself and becomes entrenched as a shared habitus. (shrink)

The nation is usually taken to be an expression, and ?nationalism? a defence, of culture. But we may have sanguinary national conflict (as in Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia) where cultural difference is small; and we may have minimal conflict (as in Switzerland or Belgium) where cultural difference is great. This essay proposes a shift, away from seeing nations as grounded in culture, to seeing them as grounded in ?identity? ? often forged by historical forces having nothing to do (...) with culture per se. This essay rejects a cultural argument for liberal nationalism (associated with the work of Raz, Miller and Kymlicka among others) precisely because it confounds national identity with common culture. Since nations diverge despite a common culture, ?common culture? cannot explain them. Identity is more fundamental. It persists where culture changes. (shrink)

For philosophical naturalism, as I understand it, philosophy is continuous with natural science. It takes the methods of philosophy to be continuous with those of the natural sciences and is sceptical of allegedly apriori intuitions which it claims need to be tested against one’s other beliefs and, ideally, against the world.

The first part of this article discusses recent skepticism about character traits. The second describes various forms of virtue ethics as reactions to such skepticism. The philosopher J.-P. Sartre argued in the 1940s that character traits are pretenses, a view that the sociologist E. Goffman elaborated in the 1950s. Since then social psychologists have shown that attributions of character traits tend to be inaccurate through the ignoring of situational factors. (Personality psychology has tended to concentrate on people's conceptions of personality (...) and character rather than on the accuracy of these conceptions). Similarly, the political theorist R. Hardin has argued for situational explanations of bloody social disputes in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa, rather than explanations in terms of ethnic hatred for example. A version of virtue ethics might identify virtues as characteristics of acts rather than character traits, as traits consisting in actual regularities in behavior, or as robust dispositions that would manifest themselves also in counterfactual situations. (shrink)

Different attempts have been made to answer Reich’s question of why the majority of those who are hungry don’t steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don’t strike. The two most influential approaches have been the ideological one and the gunman theory. The gunman theory seems to have the upper hand. However, there are cases where oppression takes place in the absence of any gunman. The usual example is the democratic welfare state. We can conceive of such (...) instances of (continued) oppression by a minority of a majority as cases of rational injustice. Unless the privileged minority accepts the introduction of just institutions, there is no way of introducing them. And, for simple egoistic reasons, the minority doesn’t cooperate with the majority. So it is rational for the oppressed majority to endure. (shrink)

While theorists of cultural pluralism have generally supported tribal sovereignty to protect threatened Native cultures, they fail to address adequately cultural conflicts between Native and non-Native communities, especially when tribal sovereignty facilitates illiberal or undemocratic practices. In response, I draw on Jürgen Habermas' conceptions of dis-course and the public sphere to develop a universalist approach to cultural pluralism, called the 'intercultural public sphere', which analyzes how cultures can engage in mutual learning and mutual criticism under fair conditions. This framework accommodates (...) cultural diversity within formally universalistic parameters while avoiding four common criticisms of universalist approaches to cultural pluralism. But this framework differs from that of Habermas in two ways. First, it includes 'subaltern' publics, open only to members of cultural subgroups, in order to counter relations of 'cultural power'. Second, it admits 'strong' publics, democratic institutions with decision-making powers. Finally, I show how the subaltern, strong institutions of tribal sovereignty contribute to the fair discursive conditions required for mutual learning and mutual critique in an intercultural public sphere. Key Words: Habermas • Kymlicka • Native peoples • sovereignty • tribal. (shrink)

. This article inquires into the social function of guilt, especially collective guilt, and the implications thereof for collective violence and collective memory. The focus is on the relationship between collective violence and collective memory in countries that have experienced cultural trauma, defined as a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric. Analyzing the dynamics—the mechanisms and processes—of remembering and forgetting such trauma, I argue that the idea of collective guilt is essential for making sense (...) of collective violence and collective memory. Specifically, I show that collective violence requires collective action; that collective action produces collective guilt; that collective violence generates perceptions—and misperceptions—of collective guilt; and that collective memory is formed, deformed, and transformed by perceptions—and misperceptions—of collective guilt. The article uses illustrative data from a variety of cases to illuminate these dynamics. It concludes by explaining why understanding these dynamics is imperative for responding to historic injustice in the twenty‐first century.Flash‐backs falsify the Past:they forgetthe remembering Present. (shrink)

For the most part, current reflections on the social seem to overemphasize either homogeneity (society/nation-state, modernization/globalization) or heterogeneity (sociality, cosmopolitanism). Against this, here the argument is put forward that it is appropriate to think of the social as consisting of aspects of homogeneity or shared frames of reference and aspects of heterogeneity at the same time. This thought is developed particularly in contrast to normative concepts such as Bauman's sociality—republicanism nexus or Beck and Grande's ideas on European cosmopolitanism. With the (...) help of concepts such as sociation, glocalization and conflict, a basis will be developed for the elaboration of particular socials (e.g. Europe) as a general social theory. This avoids falling into normative traps, which are usually risky when starting out from a historical particularity to explain current and future structures and features of notions such as European society. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes between two kinds of products, `symbolic' and `substantive'. While substantive products confer welfare utility in the sense of pecuniary benefits, symbolic products accord self-regarding utility. Symbolic products enter the utility function in a way which differs from substantive ones. The paper distinguishes among three kinds of symbolic products and proposes that each has a distorted form. If symbolic products result from forward-looking evaluation, they act as `prestige goods' which please admiration or, when distorted, as `vanity goods' which (...) satiate pretentiousness. When symbolic products originate from forward-looking action, they act as `pride goods' which satisfy respect or, when distorted, as `deference goods' which indulge pomposity. When symbolic products arise from backward-looking evaluation, they act as `identity goods' which enhance dignity or, when distorted, as `reification goods' which gratify reverence. (shrink)

Trust between a patient and a medical doctor is normally both justified and taken for granted, but sometimes it may need to be negotiated. In this paper I will present how trust can be interpreted as both an explicit and implicit phenomenon, drawing on literature from the social sciences and philosophy. The distinction between explicit and implicit interpretations of trust will be used to address problems that may arise in clinical consultations. Negotiating trust in any way very easily brings distrust (...) into a situation, but sometimes this can be helpful for building a more functional patient-doctor relationship. (shrink)

The notions 'worldview' and 'social identity' are examined to consider whether they contribute substantively to causal sequences or networks or thought clusters that result in group acts executed intentionally. ... Three proposed explanaitons of sectarian conflict or ethnic violence are analysed as examples of theories that causally link intenitonal group behaivour to the worldviews and social identities of the individual agents directly involved. But as will be shown, it is not a priori features of worldivews and identities as such, but (...) historically specific facts and contingent circumstances that need to be examined in order to explain group-motivated behaviour. Reference to worldviews and identities detract from adequate explanation. (shrink)

The integral age demands a new economic vision. This has to emphasize exchange as a processes not the exchange of things. It must address humanity's unique compulsion to learn using collaborative learning networks. These are what energize the self-organizing global change now accelerating the emergence of new global economic institutions and processes. This new vision requires political economy (i.e., economics integrated with its sociopolitical context).