What constraints should be imposed on individual liberty for the sake of protecting our collective security? A helpful approach to answering this question is offered by a theory that grounds political obligation and authority in a moral requirement of fair contribution to mutually beneficial cooperative schemes. This approach encourages us to split the opening question into two—a question of correctness and a question of legitimacy—and generates a detailed set of answers to both subsidiary questions, with a nuanced and plausible set (...) of implications. The plausibility of its treatment of the issues surrounding liberty and security, I argue, helps to confer credibility on the fairness-based theory that carries these implications. (shrink)

A number of philosophers from Hobbes to Mill to Parfit have held some combination of the following views about the Golden Rule: (a) It is the cornerstone of morality across many if not all cultures. (b) It affirms the value of moral impartiality, and potentially the core idea of utilitarianism. (c) It is immune from evolutionary debunking, that is, there is no good naturalistic explanation for widespread acceptance of the Golden Rule, ergo the best explanation for its appearance in different (...) traditions is that people have perceived the same non-natural moral truth. De Lazari-Radek and Singer employ all three of these claims in an argument meant to vindicate Sidgwick's ‘principle of universal benevolence’. I argue that the Golden Rule is the cornerstone of morality only in Christianity, it does not advocate moral impartiality, and there is a naturalistic explanation for why versions of the Golden Rule appear in different traditions. (shrink)

Some religiously devout individuals believe divine command can override an obligation to obey the law where the two are in conflict. At the extreme, some individuals believe that acts of violence that seek to change or punish a political community, or to prevent others from violating what they take to be God’s law, are morally justified. In the face of this apparent clash between religious and political commitments it might seem that modern versions of political morality—such as John Rawls’s political (...) liberalism—that refuse to take a stance on controversial religious matters, or eschew appeal to perfectionist doctrines, are beset by a particularly acute version of this problem of religious disobedience. Whilst political liberalism follows this path so as to generate wide and stable support, it raises the question of how political liberals should respond to religiously motivated non-compliance with the norms of that liberal conception of justice. This article evaluates what resources are available to political liberalism to respond to this challenge. It examines whether anti-perfectionism can be sustained in the face of those whose religious beliefs are in conflict with the law. We argue that, under certain circumstances, political liberalism requires direct engagement with the religious views of the unreasonable, including offering religious arguments to show that their particular interpretation of their faith is mistaken. This view takes political liberalism away from its usual ambitions, but it is a position that is both anticipated by Rawls and consistent with his view. It does, however, require that political liberals give up the claim that the view is a wholly non-sectarian, purely political view, and accept that, under certain circumstances it is a partially comprehensive version of liberal theory. (shrink)

Philosophers have often adopted a dismissive attitude toward metaphor. Hobbes (1651, ch. 8) advocated excluding metaphors from rational discourse because they “openly profess deceit,” while Locke (1690, Bk. 3, ch. 10) claimed that figurative uses of language serve only “to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats.” Later, logical positivists like Ayer and Carnap assumed that because metaphors like..

According to a common reading of Thomas Hobbes, fear is the most philosophically important passion, responsible for the founding and sustaining of the commonwealth. I argue that this common reading is incorrect by focusing on the necessary and important role of hope in human action as well as in the founding and sustaining of the commonwealth. Life in the Hobbesian commonwealth, on the reading defended in this paper, is less fearful and more hopeful than scholars have noticed.

This article analyses the biochemical object of tnf inhibitors from the perspective of living with an autoimmune disease. The author tries to tease out how the concept of immune inhibition is used in tandem with the biochemical object of tnf inhibitors to dominate in defining and narrating what health and disease, normal and pathological, cure and healing can mean in the context of autoimmune bodies. Specifically, and within the ‘pathological’ framework of autoimmune diseases, the pharmacological treatment of tnf inhibition is (...) designed to suppress the ‘overly’ active immune system, thus acting as a negative or suppressing biochemical agent aimed at putting the ‘malfunctioning’ immune system back in balance. As can be seen in the current conjuncture, tnf inhibitors officially —and governmentally— place those taking them in a risk group, as they 'lower' their overall bodily immunity and make them more vulnerable to infectious diseases, while stabilizing their patho-logical, ‘over’-immune uninhibited condition. Part personal narrative of being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, part speculative autoimmune theory inspired by such a diagnosis, the article ultimately calls for a different form of embodiment that is neither negative nor affirmative, and yet is resistant even to itself. (shrink)

Either we are in an elevated extinction rate event or in a mass extinction. Scientists disagree, and the matter cannot be resolved empirically until it is too late. We are the cause of the elevated extinction rate. What does this say about us, we who are Homo sapiens—the wise hominid? Beginning with the Renaissance and spreading during the 18th century, the normative notion of humanity has arisen to stand for what expresses our dignity as humans—specifically our thoughtfulness, in the double (...) sense of our capacity for reasoned choice and our capacity to enter sympathetically into the lives of others considering their good outside of the egotistical orbit of our own. Concurrent with this tradition has been a counter-current of critical thought viewing humans as self-defeating or self-destructive beings. This view reached great heights in the 20th century. Our causing an elevated extinction rate is largely unintentional and goes against our humanity in form as well as in content. Accordingly, it shows us to .. (shrink)

What makes humans moral beings? This question can be understood either as a proximate question or as an ultimate question. The question is about the mental and social mechanisms that produce moral judgments and interactions, and has been investigated by psychologists and social scientists. The question is about the fitness consequences that explain why humans have morality, and has been discussed by evolutionary biologists in the context of the evolution of cooperation. Our goal here is to contribute to a fruitful (...) articulation of such proximate and ultimate explanations of human morality. We develop an approach to morality as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions. In this environment, the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally. Those who offer less than others will be left out of cooperation; conversely, those who offer more will be exploited by their partners. In line with this mutualistic approach, the study of a range of economic games involving property rights, collective actions, mutual help and punishment shows that participants' distributions aim at sharing the costs and benefits of interactions in an impartial way. In particular, the distribution of resources is influenced by effort and talent, and the perception of each participant's rights on the resources to be distributed. (shrink)

Moral hypocrisy is motivation to appear moral yet, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral. In business, moral hypocrisy allows one to engender trust, solve the commitment problem, and still relentlessly pursue personal gain. Indicating the power of this motive, research has provided clear and consistent evidence that, given the opportunity, many people act to appear fair (e.g., they flip a coin to distribute resources between themselves and another person) without actually being fair (they accept the flip only (...) if it favors themselves). New evidence also indicates the power of moral hypocrisy in a situation more obviously relevant to business, resource allocation when one party has information about relative resource value that the other does not. Characteristics of modern business situations likely to encourage moral hypocrisy are outlined. We conclude that moral hypocrisy is not only a pragmatic virtue in modern business but is also fast becoming a prescriptive one. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

Like many governments in this COVID-19 pandemic, the Nigerian government imposed a lockdown on the country. As a consequence of the lockdown, many businesses shutdown and effectively had no source of revenue. Yet, without receiving any bailout or palliatives from the government, these businesses are required to meet their tax obligations to the government. Bearing in mind that this time (COVID-19 era) is different, one wonders what is required of businesses in view of the taxation problem and the social contract (...) between the businesspersons and the government. In view of social contract obligations, in this COVID-19 pandemic should businesses pay tax to a government that seems to have delegitimised itself by its exploitative actions in terms of taxation and delinquent omission in terms of the provision of public goods and social services? The Nigerian government at all tiers (federal, state and local) seldom respect the essence of taxation. Therefore, businesses often pay tax for nothing. For many businesses, as far as taxation is concerned, to pay or not to pay? that is the question. This article is aimed at teasing out this taxation problem that may or may not be a moral dilemma. In view of certain ethical considerations, this article shows why in spite of social contract obligations, there is no consensus or canonical agreement on whether, as law-abiding citizens and juridical persons (legal entities), businesspersons and businesses ought to or ought not to pay tax to the Nigerian government in this COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

This chapter argues that dual-use emerging technologies are distributing unprecedented offensive capabilities to nonstate actors. To counteract this trend, some scholars have proposed that states become a little “less liberal” by implementing large-scale surveillance policies to monitor the actions of citizens. This is problematic, though, because the distribution of offensive capabilities is also undermining states’ capacity to enforce the rule of law. I will suggest that the only plausible escape from this conundrum, at least from our present vantage point, is (...) the creation of a “supersingleton” run by a friendly superintelligence, founded upon a “post-singularity social contract.” In making this argument, the present chapter offers a novel reason for prioritizing the “control problem,” i.e., the problem of ensuring that a greaterthan-human-level AI will positively enhance human well-being. (shrink)

Sự tiến bộ nhanh chóng của các nền tảng Công nghệ Thông tin (CNTT) và ngôn ngữ lập trình đã làm thay đổi hình thái vận động và phát triển của xã hội loài người. Không gian mạng và các tiện ích đi kèm ngày càng được mở rộng, dẫn đến sự chuyển dịch dần từ đời sống trong thế giới thực sang đời sống trong thế giới ảo (còn gọi là không gian mạng hay không gian số). Sự mở (...) rộng và phát triển của các Mô hình Xử lý Ngôn ngữ Tự nhiên (Natural Language Processing – NLP) và Mô hình Ngôn ngữ Lớn (Large Language Model – LLM) thể hiện những đặc điểm giống con người về lập luận, nhận thức, sự chú ý và sáng tạo đã giúp con người vượt qua rào cản về khả năng vận hành. Đi kèm với các tiềm năng to lớn của AI là những lỗ hổng bảo mật mới và các rủi ro về an ninh thông tin phức tạp hơn. Khi xã hội vẫn đang cố gắng chuyển mình sang giai đoạn mới để có thể thích ứng với sự biến đổi công nghệ, cuộc cách mạng AI lại tiếp tục diễn ra đòi hỏi chúng ta phải suy nghĩ lại quỹ đạo của quá trình chuyển đổi xã hội vì nó có thể làm trầm trọng hơn các rủi ro an ninh thông tin được trình bày ở trên. Cụ thể, xã hội cần tiến hóa như thế nào để có thể bắt kịp với sự biến đổi mang tính đột phá tạo ra bởi làn sóng công nghệ AI hiện nay? Làm sao để quản lý và tận dụng sức mạnh của chúng trong khi vẫn đảm bảo được an ninh thông tin khi không gian và thời gian sống trong thế giới ảo của chúng ta ngày càng tăng? Phần hai và cũng là phần cuối của bài viết sẽ giúp làm sáng tỏ cách con người tương tác với AI và các quyền tự do vận dụng AI cho mục đích cá nhân có ảnh hưởng như thế nào đối với an ninh thông tin trên không gian mạng, cũng như là vai trò của chính phủ, doanh nghiệp, và người dân trong việc đảm bảo an ninh thông tin. (shrink)

Sự tiến bộ nhanh chóng của các nền tảng Công nghệ Thông tin (CNTT) và ngôn ngữ lập trình đã làm thay đổi hình thái vận động và phát triển của xã hội loài người. Không gian mạng và các tiện ích đi kèm ngày càng được mở rộng, dẫn đến sự chuyển dịch dần từ đời sống trong thế giới thực sang đời sống trong thế giới ảo (còn gọi là không gian mạng hay không gian số). Sự mở (...) rộng và phát triển của các Mô hình Xử lý Ngôn ngữ Tự nhiên (Natural Language Processing – NLP) và Mô hình Ngôn ngữ Lớn (Large Language Model – LLM) thể hiện những đặc điểm giống con người về lập luận, nhận thức, sự chú ý và sáng tạo đã giúp con người vượt qua rào cản về khả năng vận hành. Đi kèm với các tiềm năng to lớn của AI là những lỗ hổng bảo mật mới và các rủi ro về an ninh thông tin phức tạp hơn. Khi xã hội vẫn đang cố gắng chuyển mình sang giai đoạn mới để có thể thích ứng với sự biến đổi công nghệ, cuộc cách mạng AI lại tiếp tục diễn ra đòi hỏi chúng ta phải suy nghĩ lại quỹ đạo của quá trình chuyển đổi xã hội vì nó có thể làm trầm trọng hơn các rủi ro an ninh thông tin được trình bày ở trên. Cụ thể, xã hội cần tiến hóa như thế nào để có thể bắt kịp với sự biến đổi mang tính đột phá tạo ra bởi làn sóng công nghệ AI hiện nay? Làm sao để quản lý và tận dụng sức mạnh của chúng trong khi vẫn đảm bảo được an ninh thông tin khi không gian và thời gian sống trong thế giới ảo của chúng ta ngày càng tăng? Phần một của bài viết sẽ bàn về các vấn đề và rủi ro ảnh hưởng đến an ninh thông tin trong kỷ nguyên AI, cũng như là vai trò, lợi thế, và cơ hội của việc vận dụng AI cho mục đích đảm bảo an ninh thông tin. (shrink)

This project retraces activations of Kierkegaard in the development of polit­ical theology. It suggests alternative modes of states of exception than those attributed to him by Schmitt, Taubes and Agamben. Several Kierkegaardian themes open themselves to 'something like pure potential' in Agamben, namely: living death, animality, criminality, auto-constitution, modification, liturgy, love and certain articulations of improbabilities. Attention is drawn to a modal ontology and auto-constitution at work in Kierkegaard's writings, as well as a complicated and indissociable operation between killing and (...) letting-live in legalist exceptionalism, comparable to similar functions found in Foucault regarding the biopowers and necropolitics of territorial and governmental apparatuses. It closes in consideration of Kierkegaard's critique of enumeration, large numbers, and statistical probability alongside contemporary tele-technoscientific social controls via the online datafication of people by surveillance or platform capitalisms. After Kierkegaard, such apparatuses are perhaps suspect as calculated to tranquilize humanity into more docile subhumans as it fools folk into becoming part of its numbers. (*Accompanying file includes only front matter, abstract, and endnotes*). (shrink)

Sự tiến bộ nhanh chóng của các nền tảng Công nghệ Thông tin (CNTT) và ngôn ngữ lập trình đã làm thay đổi hình thái vận động và phát triển của xã hội loài người. Không gian mạng và các tiện ích đi kèm ngày càng được mở rộng, dẫn đến sự chuyển dịch dần từ đời sống trong thế giới thực sang đời sống trong thế giới ảo (còn gọi là không gian mạng hay không gian số). Sự mở (...) rộng và phát triển của các Mô hình Xử lý Ngôn ngữ Tự nhiên (Natural Language Processing – NLP) và Mô hình Ngôn ngữ Lớn (Large Language Model – LLM) thể hiện những đặc điểm giống con người về lập luận, nhận thức, sự chú ý và sáng tạo đã giúp con người vượt qua rào cản về khả năng vận hành. Đi kèm với các tiềm năng to lớn của AI là những lỗ hổng bảo mật mới và các rủi ro về an ninh thông tin phức tạp hơn. Khi xã hội vẫn đang cố gắng chuyển mình sang giai đoạn mới để có thể thích ứng với sự biến đổi công nghệ, cuộc cách mạng AI lại tiếp tục diễn ra đòi hỏi chúng ta phải suy nghĩ lại quỹ đạo của quá trình chuyển đổi xã hội vì nó có thể làm trầm trọng hơn các rủi ro an ninh thông tin được trình bày ở trên. Cụ thể, xã hội cần tiến hóa như thế nào để có thể bắt kịp với sự biến đổi mang tính đột phá tạo ra bởi làn sóng công nghệ AI hiện nay? Làm sao để quản lý và tận dụng sức mạnh của chúng trong khi vẫn đảm bảo được an ninh thông tin khi không gian và thời gian sống trong thế giới ảo của chúng ta ngày càng tăng? Bài viết này sẽ giúp làm sáng tỏ và trả lời các câu hỏi này. (shrink)

Open access-introduction into moral philosophy in German language that contains chapters on the concept of morality, on the development and the main positions of normative ethics, on meta-ethics, and on the various fields of applied ethics. One of its distinctive features is that it explicitly reflects on the role of morality and ethics in modern society and that it analyses the import of alternative conceptual and normative positions for determining this role. The book can be freely downloaded from the publisher's (...) website via the URL below. (shrink)

Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

.The article deals with the difference between some forms of legal positivism. It is argued that, even in continental legal systems which are typically “rule bound,” there is some space left for principles in the legal system. The author tries to explain how this space can be filled and what methods should be used by a judge to do so.

Philosophers usually discuss responsibility in terms of responsibility for past actions or as a question about the nature of moral agency. Yet the word responsibility is fairly modern, whereas these topics arguably represent timeless concerns about human agency. This paper investigates another use of responsibility, that is particularly important to modern liberal societies: responsibility as a virtue that can be demonstrated by individuals and organisations. The paper notes its initial importance in political contexts, and seeks to explain why we now (...) demand responsibility in all spheres of life. In reply, I highlight the distinctively institutional character of modern liberal societies: institutions specify many of the particular responsibilities each of us must fulfil, but also require responsibility to sustain them and address their failings. My overall argument is that the virtue of responsibility occupies a distinctive place in the moral needs, and moral achievements, of liberal societies; and this, in turn, explains why it now occupies such a prominent place in our moral discourse. (shrink)

Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze (...) such claims rhetorically, cognitively, and epistemically. Namely, how do we think about human nature? Claims about human nature, we show, are susceptible to widely exhibited deficits in cognitive tendencies such as framing, confirmation bias, satisficing, and teleological perspectives, as well as motivated reasoning. Such missteps foster methodological, empirical, and psychological mistakes and biases. Specifically, they promote the naturalizing error, whereby cultural ideology and values are projected onto an apparently objective description of nature. Concrete remedies are offered to aid scientists in conducting and reporting their research goals and findings more responsibly and effectively (relevant also to educators and other communicators who convey these findings publicly). Recommendations include acknowledging that human nature claims are often context-dependent, seeking multiple critical perspectives, and explicitly labeling uncertainties. (shrink)

The reemergence of the question of suicide in the medical context of physician-assisted suicide seems to me one of the most interesting and fertile facets of late modernity. Aside from the disruption which this issue may cause in the traditional juridical relationship between individuals and the state, it may also help to transform the dominant conception of subjectivity that has been erected upon modernity's medicalized order of death. To enhance this disruptive potential, I am going to examine the perspectives on (...) death offered by two contemporary writers: Zygmunt Bauman and Jean Baudrillard. Each of these writers recognizes the centrality of death to modern culture, as Heidegger did, but they also go beyond him in specifying the ways in which death maintains a presence in late modernity, despite efforts to conceal it. In particular, both of these writers recognize the important role that medicine has played in ordering the modern conception of death. After situating these two perspectives in relation to each other, and in relation to Heidegger, who will serve here as a sort of benchmark, I will return to the issue of suicide. Given the differences in their readings of the role that death and medicine play in modern culture, these post-Heideggerians take strikingly different positions on this issue. By engaging these perspectives, I intend not only to point out the tremendous potential which this issue holds for a fundamental rethinking of modern subjectivity, but also reveal some of the dangers that may beset any naive optimism about the right to die. (shrink)

The question of what a group of rational agents would agree on were they to deliberate on how to organise society is central to all hypothetical social contract theories. If morality is to be based on a social contract, we need to know the terms of this contract. One type of social contract theory, contractarianism, aims to derive morality from rationality alone. Contractarians need to show, amongst other things, that rational and self-interested individuals would agree on an impartial division of (...) a cooperative surplus. But it is often claimed that contractarians cannot show this without introducing moral assumptions. This paper argues that on the right understanding of the question contractarians are asking, these worries can be answered. Without relying on moral assumptions, the paper offers a novel derivation of symmetry, which is the axiom responsible for the impartiality of the most famous economic bargaining solutions appealed to by contractarians. (shrink)

Summary I try to apply Lakatos's metacriterion of the rationality of normative philosophies of science to normative political theories, stressing that Lakatos's metacriterion is not only an extension of Popper's idea of tests by potentially falsifyingdescriptive basic judgments to tests by potentially falsifyingnormative judgments. Rather, its application is a test by demonstrating the tested theory's capability of reconstructing its own history as rational. Finally I argue that the tradition of utilitarian political theories is fittest to be confirmed by a Lakatosian (...) test. (shrink)

This article offers a political reading of Franz Kafka's posthumous work The Trial. In this novel, the main protagonist is subject to an arrest and trial conducted by the ambiguous authority of a shadowy court and its officials. This article explores Joseph K.'s experience of being subject to the Law, and relates this to our own understanding and experience of political subjectivity in modern times. K.'s doomed search for order through a ‘permanent resolution’ of his case is related to the (...) modern desire for order: Specifically, the desire for both philosophical and political frameworks that provide narratives or certainty. Here modernity is understood to be characterized by an anxiety brought about by a crisis in authorship and authority. The article then considers K.'s desire for justice and the Law, and his entanglement with the power of the court, as analogous to the modern experience of the triad of justice–law–power, which is subsumed under the banner of ‘sovereignty’. In particular, the article explores K.'s inability to locate, read, or fix the Law; a problem that is also reflected in the aporia of sovereignty as justice–law–power. K.'s experience alerts us to the contradictions in the triad justice–law–power; contradictions that occur as although each member of the triad is dependent upon the other two, each member of the triad also seeks to exclude or deny this dependency. Thus, read politically, K.'s struggle in The Trial can be seen as a reflection of the modern struggle with sovereignty as the triad justice–law–power, and the impasse that K. reaches is also the impasse that modernity has reached. (shrink)

The Enlightenment regarded language as one of the most significant achievements of man. Consequently inquiries into the origin and development of language play a central role in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. This new science of man consciously adopts the method of analysis and synthesis used in the natural sciences of the time. In moral philosophy, analysis corresponds to the search for the basic principles of human nature. Synthesis is identified with the attempt to interpret all artificial achievements of man (arts, sciences (...) and institutions) as the effect of these principles and of man's physical and social environment - an attempt known as theoretical history. The type of explanation envisaged by theoretical historians is based on the principle of causality. It consists in a genetic reconstruction of the social phenomenon under investigation. Inquiries into the origin of language follow this pattern of explanation. They form part of theoretical history and thus represent a major aspect of the eighteenth-century scientific study of man. (shrink)

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global private governance system overseeing the sustainability and biodiversity of the world forestry system through certification of forests and forestry processes and products, and is perceived as the strongest of the various certification schemes available (Domask, Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government, and Society , 2003 ; Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics , 2004 ). It has seen more success in developed than developing countries in terms of amount of forest certified and number of (...) chain-of-custody certificates issued, raising questions as to its ability to promote biodiversity Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics , 2004 ). A number of challenges have risen to the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC as a global governance system: alternative certification schemes, output and market access, cost of certification, plantations, and illegal logging. I examine each of these challenges as they pertain to the dimensions of pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications for global governance systems using ecolabel schemes, as well as a discussion of practical implications for the FSC in particular. (shrink)

This paper explores concepts of multiple and nested identities and how these relate to citizenship and rights, and the implications of identities and rights for active citizenship education. Various theoretical conceptions of identity are analysed, and in particular ideas concerning multiple identities that are used contingently, and about identities that do not necessarily include feeling a strong affinity with others in the group. The argument then moves to the relationship between identity and citizenship, and particularly citizenship and rights. Citizenship is (...) treated non-legalistically, as one of the locations of belonging. The paper draws on three successive categorisations of citizenship rights: by T.H. Marshall in the 1950s, Karel Vasak in the late 1970s and John Urry in the 1990s, and is illustrated in part by the development of European citizenship in parallel to national identity. This is then linked to how contemporary citizenship education might use the exploration of contested rights as a way of developing practical enactive skills of citizenship. (shrink)

Although neglected by psychology, self-respect has been an integral part of philosophical discussion since Aristotle and continues to be a central issue in contemporary moral philosophy. Within this tradition, self-respect is considered to be based on one's capacity for rationality and leads to behaviors that promote autonomy, such as independence, self-control and tenacity. Self-respect elicits behaviors that one should be treated with respect and requires the development and pursuit of personal standards and life plans that are guided by respect for (...) self and others. In contrast, the psychological concept of self-esteem is grounded in the theories of self-concept. As such, self-esteem is a self-evaluation of competency ratios and opinions of significant others that results in either a positive or negative evaluation of one's worthiness and inclusionary status. The major distinction between the two is that while competency ratios and others' opinions are central to self-esteem, autonomy is central to self-respect. We submit that not only is self-respect important in understanding self-esteem, but that it also uniquely contributes to individual functioning. Research is needed to establish the central properties of self-respect and their effects on individual functioning, developmental factors, and therapeutic approaches. (shrink)

Cybernetics, or self-governance of animal and machine, requires the ability to sense the world and to act on it in an appropriate manner. Likewise, self-governance of a human society requires groups of people to collectively sense and act on their environment. I argue that the evolution of political systems is characterized by a series of innovations that attempt to solve two ‘scalability’ problems: scaling up a group’s ability to make sense of an increasingly complex world, and to cooperate in increasingly (...) larger groups. I then explore some recent efforts toward using the Internet and social media to provide alternative means for addressing these scalability challenges, under the banners of crowdsourcing and computer-supported argumentation. I present some lessons from those efforts about the limits of technology, and the research directions more likely to bear fruit. (shrink)

Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have raised many questions about the regulatory and governance mechanisms for autonomous machines. Many commentators, scholars, and policy-makers now call for ensuring that algorithms governing our lives are transparent, fair, and accountable. Here, I propose a conceptual framework for the regulation of AI and algorithmic systems. I argue that we need tools to program, debug and maintain an algorithmic social contract, a pact between various human stakeholders, mediated by machines. To achieve (...) this, we can adapt the concept of human-in-the-loop from the fields of modeling and simulation, and interactive machine learning. In particular, I propose an agenda I call society-in-the-loop, which combines the HITL control paradigm with mechanisms for negotiating the values of various stakeholders affected by AI systems, and monitoring compliance with the agreement. In short, ‘SITL = HITL + Social Contract.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a central problem for conceptual engineering: the problem of showing concept-users why they should recognise the authority of the concepts advocated by engineers. I argue that this authority problem cannot generally be solved by appealing to the increased precision, consistency, or other theoretical virtues of engineered concepts. Outside contexts in which we anyway already aim to realise theoretical virtues, solving the authority problem requires engineering to take a functional turn and attend to the functions of (...) concepts. But this then presents us with the problem of how to specify a concept’s function. I argue that extant solutions to this function specification problem are unsatisfactory for engineering purposes, because the functions they identify fail to reliably bestow authority on concepts, and hence fail to solve the authority problem. What is required is an authoritative notion of conceptual function: an account of the functions of concepts which simultaneously shows why concepts fulfilling such functions should be recognised as having authority. I offer an account that meets this combination of demands by specifying the functions of concepts in terms of how they tie in with our present concerns. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to reconstruct different aspects of the history of ideas of suicide, from antiquity to late modernity, and contemplate their dialectical tension. Reflexive suicide prevention, drawing on the ancient wisdom that the art of living is inseparable from the art of dying, takes advantage, it is argued, of the contradictory nature of suicide, and hence embraces, rather than trying to overcome, death, pain, grief, fear, hopelessness and milder depressions. This approach might facilitate the transformation (...) of inner shame to inter-personal guilt, which is the precondition for coping with losses through grieving that is shared with others. The traditional projection of suicide on the ‘Other’, reinforced by modernity’s bio-political suppression of death, has inhibited development of good suicide prevention. Awareness of the ambiguity and ambivalence found in suicide may work as a resource when measures are taken to address as many causal mechanisms as possible, and bringing special emphasis to external factors. (shrink)

We offer a theory regarding the symbolism of the human body in legal discourse. The theory blends legal theory, the neuroscience of empathy, and biosemiotics, a branch of semiotics that combines semiotics with theoretical biology. Our theory posits that this symbolism of the body is not solely a metaphor or semiotic sign of how law is cognitively structured in the mind. We propose that it also signifies neurobiological mechanisms of social emotion in the brain that are involved in the social (...) and moral decision-making and behavior that law generally seeks to govern. Specifically, we hypothesize that the symbol of a collective human body in the language of law signifies neural mechanisms of pain empathy which generate a virtual, neurally simulated, emotional sense of sharing the feelings or pain of others and of thereby being one-in-body with or virtually equal to them. We speculate that this may be the neural basis of what is signified in legal and political theory as the “body politic” or “sense of equality,” because neuroscience and psychiatry further suggest that such pain empathy may provide the natural, emotional motivation to think and act in a rights-based manner. We conclude that misunderstanding of these neural mechanisms of pain empathy and related misinterpretation of this corporeal symbolism for the same may have long resulted in legal discourse that misinterprets the function of “pain” in the law and misinterprets the associated positive law, specifically the law regarding individual, equality-based rights and criminal justice, in particular, punishment theory. (shrink)

Philosophers have long argued that duties to oneself are paradoxical, as they seem to entail an incoherent power to release oneself from obligations. I argue that self-release is possible, both as a matter of deontic logic and of metaethics.

This paper utilizes Iris Marion Young’s critical, post-9/11 reading of Thomas Hobbes, as a theorist of authoritarian government grounded in fear of threat (Young 2003). Applying Young’s reading of Hobbes to the high-profile ethicist Julian Savulescu’s advocacy of genetic enhancement reveals an underlying unjust discrimination in Savulescu’s use of patriarchal protector–protected analogies between family and state. First, the paper shows how Savulescu’s concept of procreative beneficence, in which parents use genetic selection to have children who will have the best lives (...) possible, is unjustly discriminatory against marginalized groups. Increasingly, however, he has invoked public security to justify genetic interventions. In recent speeches, Savulescu has argued a global state of emergency is developing due to a combination of the global environmental crisis, the threat of bioterrorism, and the failure of liberalism. To help deal with this emerging state of emergency, Savulescu advocates an unjustly discriminatory array of genetic-based governance practices, including detention and segregation. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point the commonly held claim about the obscurity of the concept of sovereignty, the article first identifies a fundamental paradox between the classical Westphalian notion of state sovereignty and human rights. In the rhetoric of international politics, attempts to establish the responsibility of states to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms within their jurisdictions are often countered with claims referring to the “sovereign equality” of all states and the subsequent principle of non-intervention. The article suggests that (...) in a more contemporary understanding of sovereignty the responsibility of a state to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms is seen as a constituent ingredient of the state itself. The chapter continues to elaborate how this change has come about. The classical notion of sovereignty is illustrated through a reading of Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576). In Bodin’s world, sovereignty is a constitutive element of the state, and the possibility of a multitude of sovereign entities in a global world logically denying the possibility of any “supra-national” normative framework is still a minor consideration. This possibility is only worked out with the emergence of international law. In both classics such as Emmerich de Vattel’s The Law of Nations (1758) and more contemporary treatises such as Lassa Oppenheim’s International Law (1905), state sovereignty has become conditional to recognition by other sovereign states and a subsequent membership in the “family of nations.” The conditional membership in the “family of nations” involves a contradiction: a sovereign state must act in a “dignified” manner, it must use its sovereignty with “restraint” by respecting the human rights and fundamental freedoms of its citizens, i.e., it must employ its sovereignty in a non-sovereign way. This restriction of sovereignty, addressed as “ethical sovereignty,” becomes a constitutive element in a post-Westphalian state and a central ingredient in the contemporary doctrine of humanitarian intervention. The article further criticizes the various uses (and abuses) of “ethical sovereignty” in the regulation of “failing” and “rogue” states and concludes by identifying its general political dangers. Finally, with reference to Jacques Derrida’s Rogues (2003), the article suggests a more radical reappraisal of the concept of sovereignty.It is a fact that sovereignty is a term used without any well-recognised meaning except that of supreme authority. Under these circumstances those who do not want to interfere in a mere scholastic controversy must cling to the facts of life and the practical, though abnormal and illogical, condition of affairs.1—Lassa OppenheimBut to invoke the concept of national sovereignty as in itself a decisional factor is to fall back on a word which has an emotive quality lacking meaningful specific content. It is to substitute pride for reason.2—Eli Lauterpacht. (shrink)

A major part of research into cyber‐propaganda discusses the following components it uses: disinformation, creating fake news and employing so‐called farm trolls. Actions of this kind do not correspond with the classic division of soft and hard power, since neither can their goals nor the means they utilise be unambiguously defined as coercion, payment, or attraction. In my article, I describe the hidden means of propaganda employed by the Russian Federation that are additionally supported by a process of armament which (...) cannot be classified as an act of disinformation. These actions aim at achieving a specific type of psychological vantage which stems from an atmosphere of fear, lack of trust, and enmity created within European societies as a result of the incoming information about Russia’s increasing military potential as well as new, dangerous means and resources that could be utilised in combat. Such an atmosphere is referred to as a “war in the head”, and it pertains to the personal belief that a military conflict is imminent, expressed by individual citizens including those in key public offices. This phenomenon, while bringing to mind Hobbes’ state of nature which encompasses the distinct readiness to fight, directly afflicts the internal and international security of European states. Such a situation directly afflicts the internal and international security of European states, for the state of fear and distrust leads to the dismantlement of public democratic institutions, and it does not help in the search for effective methods of solving either internal or global problems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconceive safety as a form of relation embedded in particular ways of speaking, listening and thinking. Moving away from safety as a relation that is achieved once and for all and afterwards remains safe avoids some of the disappointments of discourses of safety that seem to promise once a risk is taken or a gap is bridged that thereafter relations among people will be easier and calmer. This bumpier version of safety suggests that (...) humor creates the kind of instabilities in discourse that act, perhaps ironically, as an invitation to enjoy the difficulties of communicating complex and challenging ideas. Humor, then, creates a kind of safe space, not devoid of dramatic shifts or emotional response, but organized around those shifts as experiences that are moments apart from conflict. I explore the use of humor as a form of serious play in social justice classrooms, examining the strategies of indirect teaching, contradictory lessons, and jolting pleasure that more traditional pedagogical approaches are less able to create. I see in humor a complex form of address and interaction that plays on the multiple possibilities within an utterance or concept and by reminding classroom communities of those possibilities. Humor can erupt from shared moments and disjunctive understandings and can as easily be mobilized by teachers as by students. By reopening the possibilities of concepts and relations, humor shatters simplistic readings by literally playing out what might be said and what could be tried but often manages to combine a sense of safety via shared laughter with its disruptions. (shrink)