In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness (...) or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression. (shrink)

This article aims to answer the main question raised – is Rorty’s moral philosophy possible? To what extent is it possible to treat it as an authentic theory? Rorty’s criticism of Kant and the Kantians, as one of the key points of contemporary moral philosophy, determines the posture in the moral domain and provides a certain place in discourse. The article states that, despite the fact that Rorty’s moral philosophy is not based on a particular theoretical concept, it can be (...) considered as a fragmented whole consisting of several parts, one of which is the agent’s openness to the choice of moral identity. At the same time, we will critically question the position of Rorty himself – while maintaining the suspicion towards the sources of moral knowledge, he maintains an insufficient distance with one of his own sources of moral knowledge, namely historical progress. (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

The rich have two defining capabilities: independence from and command over others. These make being wealthy very pleasant indeed, but they are also toxic to democracy. First, I analyse the mechanisms by which the presence of very wealthy individuals undermines the two pillars of liberal democracy, equality of citizenship and legitimate social choice. Second, I make a radical proposal. If we value the preservation of democracy we must limit the amount of wealth any individual can have and still be a (...) citizen of our polity. (shrink)

We suffer from genealogical anxiety when we worry that the contingent origins of our representations, once revealed, will somehow undermine or cast doubt on those representations. Is such anxiety ever rational? Many have apparently thought so, from pre-Socratic critics of Greek theology to contemporary evolutionary debunkers of morality. One strategy for vindicating critical genealogies is to see them as undermining the epistemic standing of our representations—the justification of our beliefs, the aptness of our concepts, and so on. I argue that (...) this strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Instead, I suggest that critical genealogies can wield a sort of meta-epistemic power; in so far as we wish to resist the genealogical critic, we are under pressure to see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a certain kind of good luck: what I call genealogical luck. But there is also a resolutely non-epistemic way of understanding the power of critical genealogies, one that is essential, I argue, for understanding the genealogical projects of various theorists, including Nietzsche and Catharine MacKinnon. For critical genealogies can reveal what it is that our representations do—and what we, in turn, might do with them. (shrink)

We offer a precautionary account of why business managers should proactively rethink about what kinds of automation firms ought to implement, by exploring two challenges that automation will potentially pose. We engage the current debate concerning whether life without work opportunities will incur a meaning crisis, offering an argument in favor of the position that if technological unemployment occurs, the machine age may be a structurally limited condition for many without work opportunities to have or add meaning to their lives. (...) We term this the axiological challenge. This challenge, if it turns out to be persuasive, leads to a second challenge, to which managers should pay special attention: the teleological challenge, a topic especially relevant to the broad literature about corporate purpose and governance. We argue that both the shareholder profit-maximization model and its major alternative, stakeholder theory, are insufficient to address the meaning crisis. Unless rebutted, the two challenges compel business leaders to proactively rethink the purpose of business for future society. Otherwise, businesses will be contributors to a major ethical crisis and societal externality in the coming society. (shrink)

What makes some human rights campaigns for the physical integrity rights of prisoners more effective than others? Despite various normative arguments condemning these practices, only limited systematic analysis documents the relative effectiveness of different arguments on individuals. This is surprising, because the success of human rights campaigns depends on getting individuals to care about and support policy positions that protect human rights. We constructed an experiment to compare the effects of six different arguments against prisoner abuse and torture. We found (...) that an argument which emphasized the suffering of the prisoner had a consistently positive and significant effect on opposition to torture and prisoner abuse. However, this effect was largely contingent on subjects’ political ideology. Political conservatives actually became less opposed to torture, on average, after reading the same argument emphasizing the prisoners’ suffering or the sacredness of human beings. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente, se ha argumentado que el concepto de eudaimonía en Aristóteles se encuentra anclado en el contexto de una comprensión teleológica del universo, por cuanto dicha noción parece radicar en una definición funcionalista de la naturaleza humana. Teniendo esto en mente, Bernard Williams ha desarrollado una crítica en contra de la propuesta ética de Aristóteles, acusándola de una cierta ambición científica en el campo del razonamiento práctico que resulta insostenible actualmente. Este ensayo busca discutir si, en efecto, estos señalamientos tienen (...) un sustento plausible o si, por el contrario, se basan en una interpretación debatible de los fundamentos de la ética aristotélica. Con este propósito, se analiza la justificación del razonamiento ético de Aristóteles a la luz de los argumentos de Williams y de algunos de sus contradictores. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to (...) best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (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)

This paper examines conceptions of truth and “the human” in an effort to engage contemporary discussions of neointerventionism. A central question in the paper is whether one facet of the self‐justifying structure of neointerventionism is an operative framing of theories of truth underlying the explanans sought by foreign policy officials and state actors. To address this question, I turn to an unlikely source within philosophy of language, neopragmatist theorist Richard Rorty, to offer an example of an antirepresentationalist and nonobjectivist description (...) of truth that may help explain the terms and stakes of neointerventionist policies. My claim, however, will be, following the critical insights of Cornel West, Chantal Mouffe, and Sylvia Wynter, that neopragmatist efforts of the sort outlined by Rorty, while sophisticated in their analyses of the nature of truth and forms of justification, fail to thoroughly engage the political conception of “the human” that orders and frames debates regarding objectivity and solidarity. I conclude by returning to the problematic of neointerventionism from Wynter’s framings of what she calls the “coloniality of truth” and “embattled humanisms.”. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a preliminary outline of a theory of identity. The first section addresses what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann has called ‘the problem of identity’, or, in other words, the mind–society (rather than the mind–body) problem: In how far can the internal (psychological) self and the external (social) persona be integrated into a unit? The second section of the essay briefly defines a basic vocabulary of a theory of identity. ‘Identity’ is understood as the existentially necessary formation (...) of a coherence between the ‘self’ (the ‘I’ as it is experienced in thoughts and feelings), its body and its social ‘persona’ (the individual person with its social attributes). Three different major paradigms of identity formation are distinguished from one another: a sincere identity is constructed through a firm commitment of the self to its social roles; an authentic identity is constructed through the creation of a social persona on the basis of one’s unique and original self; a ‘profilic’ identity, as we call it, is shaped by successfully presenting a personal profile under conditions of second-order observation as they prevail, for instance, in the social media, but also in other contemporary social systems. In the third section of the essay, we present a sketch of the historical sequence of these three paradigms of identity. Although these paradigms are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, it seems that sincerity flourished in pre-modern society, while authenticity came to prominence along with the functional differentiation of modern society and is now, along with the increased significance of second-order observation, gradually overshadowed by the influence of profilicity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA paper in two parts, the first is a critique of the commonly held view among both cognitivist and non-cognitivist sport philosophers that conscious mental representation of knowledge that is a necessary condition for skill acquisition. The second is a defense of a necessary causal condition for skill acquisition, a necessary causal condition that is mimetic, physically embodied, and socially embedded. To make my case I rely throughout on a common thought experiment in and beyond the philosophy of sport literature, (...) the seminal work of Kuhn and Quine counter the representational theory of knowledge, and recent argument in the philosophy of sport related to neurophysiology, cognition, and intentionality. Ultimately I conclude that the failure of a necessary representational condition and its replacement by a necessary casual condition in skill acquisition jeopardizes much of what has been said in the philosophy of sport about not just skill acquisition but the more popular topic of high-level skill. It does, because it challenges the assumption that there is some necessary baseline knowledge that which, according to cognitivists, is brought forward in some way into highly skillful performance or, according to non-cognitivists, is somehow left behind or subsumed into a background in highly skillful performance. (shrink)

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources—Foucault and Deleuze, Bourdieu, Levinas and Butler —to analyse the topic of the My School website and associated new accountabilities in Australia schooling. This article argues that their usage of the My School website must (...) be seen as a condensation symbol to signify a broader neo-liberal agenda in Australian schooling that has global as well as national elements to it. The fact that the social today is no longer straightforwardly homologous with the nation also challenges ‘methodological nationalism’ and suggests the pressing need to ‘deparochialize’ theory in research and reject a reading of Northern theory as universal. The article uses the provocations of these articles to reflect upon the necessity of theory in educational research more generally, and to consider its usage in research with different purposes, while accepting that theory should be endemic in all stages of research. Theory serves a different purpose in research with different goals; quantitative correlational research demands theory to move to explanation, interpretive research requires theory to strengthen interpretation and plausibility, while critical research utilizes theory to uncover the hidden as a step towards emancipation. These articles implicitly suggest alternative forms of accountability and politics, but I argue in conclusion that, additionally, we need a broader politics that will move us towards a non-utopian post neo-liberal social imaginary. (shrink)

This paper revisits some of the arguments in Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, twenty years after the book first appeared. Not only are many of Rorty’s diagnoses and predictions eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but there is also perceptive political advice in Rorty’s book that I argue the contemporary American Left would do well to heed. While many post-election commentators have tended to read Achieving Our Country as an admonishment of (...) so-called “identity politics” in favor of an “old Left” politics of redistribution and economic justice, I argue that the main distinction on which the analysis in Achieving Our Country hangs is between what Rorty calls “real politics” and “cultural politics”, a conclusion that is confirmed, I argue, by examining the three concrete suggestions for the American Left that together form the core positive argument in Rorty’s book. (shrink)

Can genealogical explanations affect the space of reasons? Those who think so commonly face two objections. The first objection maintains that attempts to derive reasons from claims about the genesis of something commit the genetic fallacy—they conflate genesis and justification. One way for genealogies to side-step this objection is to focus on the functional origins of practices—to show that, given certain facts about us and our environment, certain conceptual practices are rational because apt responses. But this invites a second objection, (...) which maintains that attempts to derive current from original function suffer from continuity failure—the conditions in response to which something originated no longer obtain. This paper shows how normatively ambitious genealogies can steer clear of both problems. It first maps out various ways in which genealogies can involve non-fallacious genetic arguments before arguing that some genealogies do not invite the charge of the genetic fallacy if they are interpreted as revealing the original functions of conceptual practices. However, they then incur the burden of showing that the conditions relative to which practices function continuously obtain. Taking its cue from the genealogies of E. J. Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker, the paper shows how model-based genealogies can avoid continuity failures by identifying bases of continuity in the demands we face. (shrink)

Over four decades, research and policy have created layers of understandings in the quest for "good" corporate governance. The corporate excesses of the 1970s sparked a search for market mechanisms and disclosure to empower shareholders. The UK-focused problems of the 1990s prompted board-centric, structural approaches, while the fall of Enron and many other companies in the early 2000s heightened emphasis on director independence and professionalism. With the financial crisis of 2007–09, however, came a turn in some policy approaches and in (...) academic literature seeking a different way forward. This paper explores those four phases and the discourse each develops and then links each to assumptions about accountability and cognition. After the financial crisis came pointers in policy and practice away from narrow, rationalist prescriptions and toward what the philosopher Stephen Toulmin calls "reasonableness". Acknowledging that heightens awareness of complexity and interdependence in corporate governance practice. The paper then articulates a research agenda concerning what "reasonably" good corporate governance might entail. (shrink)

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the (...) mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide. (shrink)

Among the deeper strata of Rorty’s philosophy is what I call his aversion to normative violence. Normative violence occurs when some specific group presents itself as having a privileged relation to reality. The alternative to normative violence is recognizing that cultural politics has priority over ontology. I trace this Rortyan idea to its origins in Nietzsche and Sellars. Rorty’s contribution is to combine Nietzsche on the death of God and Sellars on the Myth of the Given. However, I conclude with (...) a suggestion that Rorty ultimately goes too far in thinking that avoiding normative violence requires abstaining from metaphysics and epistemology as such. (shrink)

In Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams sought to defend the value of truth by giving a vindicatory genealogy revealing its instrumental value. But what separates Williams’s instrumental vindication from the indirect utilitarianism of which he was a critic? And how can genealogy vindicate anything, let alone something which, as Williams says of the concept of truth, does not have a history? In this paper, I propose to resolve these puzzles by reading Williams as a type of pragmatist and his genealogy (...) as a pragmatic genealogy. On this basis, I show just in what sense Williams’s genealogy can by itself yield reasons to cultivate a sense of the value of truth. Using various criticisms of Williams’s genealogical method as a foil, I then develop an understanding of pragmatic genealogy which reveals it to be uniquely suited to dealing with practices exhibiting what I call self-effacing functionality—practices that are functional only insofar as and because we do not engage in them for their functionality. I conclude with an assessment of the wider significance of Williams’s genealogy for his own oeuvre and for further genealogical inquiry. (shrink)

In Chapter 8 of The Language Animal, Charles Taylor claims that narratives are unsubstitutable for an appropriate understanding of social life and ‘human affairs’ in general. In order to identify open questions in his argumentation as well as unwanted consequences of his outlook, I proceed in three consecutive steps. I first problematize Taylor’s distinction between laws and stories, then go on to address his intentional blurring of stories and histories, and finally suggest that the concept of genealogy might be a (...) promising candidate for describing Taylor’s approach, concluding that he implicitly forms the equation: narrative equals history equals critique. (shrink)

This paper discusses some political implications of humor, using as a point of departure the mechanisms that explain the sources of the comical. First, I briefly present the main explanations offered for why we laugh. I then focus on the cognitive view proposed Hurley, Dennett and Adams, according to which humor carries out the epistemic function of eliminating the errors that covertly entered a mental space. In the second section of the paper, I present two accounts of how liberalism continues (...) to extend the scope of individual liberties. I use these views on liberalism as a background for my analysis of the political implications of humor, advancing the claim that, as a result of its epistemic function, humor has a strong conservative bias. (shrink)

World Crisis and Underdevelopment examines the impact of poverty and other global crises in generating forms of structural coercion that cause agential and societal underdevelopment. It draws from discourse ethics and recognition theory in criticizing injustices and pathologies associated with underdevelopment. Its scope is comprehensive, encompassing discussions about development science, philosophical anthropology, global migration, global capitalism and economic markets, human rights, international legal institutions, democratic politics and legitimation, world religions and secularization, and moral philosophy in its many varieties.

Throughout its history, analytic philosophy has established a decidedly anti-rhetoric self-understanding. Yet the historical development of analytic philosophy, leading from Russell to Quine and Davidson, successively puts this anti-rhetorical ideals in question. Even though the rhetorics of clarity and objectivity remain, the discussions of post-analytic philosophy focus more and more an an understanding of language which is forced to acknowledge its irreducible practical and situational aspects. Analytical philosophy, then, should be seen as a decidedly anti-rhetoric tradition which tries to keep (...) up the spirit of scientific enlightenment in times of growing skepticism -- and which is driven, by the very force of clarity and a better understanding, to develop a picture of language which undermines this ideal at least in some aspects. (shrink)

This article examines Richard Rorty’s much criticized figure of the ironist, and the role that it plays in liberal society. It argues that, against Rorty’s own presentation, irony might have positive social consequences. It does so by examining Rorty’s description of the ironist, arguing that it contains different ideas which emerge at different points in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It takes up William Curtis’ claim that irony is a civic virtue, one closely associated with liberal ideas such as tolerance and (...) pluralism. Curtis is insightful in identifying this aspect of irony, but I argue that it might also play a further role. The ironist is concerned with self-creation, something which Rorty takes to be a private activity, but I argue that the selves ironists create might potentially benefit liberal society, with the ironist’s redescriptions calling into question received wisdom and alerting us to unnoticed forms of cruelty. (shrink)

Rorty's aversion to metaphysics is well known, so the extent of his early work on Whitehead might come as a surprise. This article examines the young Rorty's critical assessment of Whitehead to show how it demonstrates the consequences of diverging metaphilosophical orientations. It argues that Rorty's insistence on judging Whitehead's work through an exclusively epistemological frame causes him to miss its more radical existential and epistemic implications. After examining how Rorty and Whitehead operate with different cost-benefit analyses as to the (...) risks and benefits of speculative philosophy, it suggests that closer attention to the fuller stakes of Whitehead's project shows that his metaphysics are not opposed to the “poeticized” culture that Rorty calls for, one where the distinction between making and finding is no longer metaphysically foundational. (shrink)

What is the cash value of Richard Rorty’s philosophy and politics of religion? This paper analyzes the political promise of Rorty’s shift from atheism to anticlericalism in the last decade of his life. It seeks to deliver primarily a concise summary of this shift, and of its transformative motivation. Then a critique of this shift is followed by the suggestion of a friendly amendment: its extension towards a pragmatic pluralism. The outlined Rortyan conception of a serene, and, at the same (...) time robust, politics of religion is proposed as a promising answer to the question of how secular liberal citizens should react to the “return of the gods.”. (shrink)

In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel describes a mode of consciousness that is analogous to that of the sage in the Zhuangzi. He labels this “Evil Consciousness.” One of the more important phases of Spirit that leads up to this stage also resonates similarities, namely the “pure I” which Hegel modeled on Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew. In what follows we will first look at the “pure I” before moving to the evil consciousness and making a comparison with the Daoist sage. By (...) contrasting these depictions, we will be better able to understand the intricacies of the sage and Hegel’s Spirit. (shrink)

Clark has recently suggested that predictive processing advances a theory of neural function with the resources to put an ecumenical end to the “representation wars” of recent cognitive science. In this paper I defend and develop this suggestion. First, I broaden the representation wars to include three foundational challenges to representational cognitive science. Second, I articulate three features of predictive processing’s account of internal representation that distinguish it from more orthodox representationalist frameworks. Specifically, I argue that it posits a resemblance-based (...) representational architecture with organism-relative contents that functions in the service of pragmatic success, not veridical representation. Finally, I argue that internal representation so understood is either impervious to the three anti-representationalist challenges I outline or can actively embrace them. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes traditional archetypes of divan literature—‘āşık (lover), ma‘şūk (beloved), and rakīb (opponent)—to show the presence of a dialectical discourse in classical Ottoman divan love poems. In both style and content divan poems display a comprehensive understanding of the postclassical Islamic philosophical conception of dialectic and argumentation theory, known as ādāb al-baḥth wa al-munāẓara. The focus on Ottoman love poetry and argumentation theory in this paper aims to demonstrate how the love poetry that developed in Ottoman culture is more (...) dialectical in form and content than Ottoman literary studies have recognized. (shrink)

In a famous passage in A Theory of Justice, Rawls had an interesting view on fraternity. However, he did not develop it further. The first aim of this article is to show that there are at least two possible interpretations of what Rawls wrote about fraternity: the narrow interpretation and the wide interpretation. We will focus on the narrow interpretation and attract attention to the kinds of problems it presents. In the last section we will assert that there are different (...) ways of conceptualising the ideal of fraternity and that Rawls’s general approach to the issue was just one of them and maybe not the most attractive one. (shrink)

La tesis central de este trabajo es que la tradicional tensión entre substancia y procedimiento socava las estabilidad de la justificación de la concepción liberal más extendida de la legitimidad (la Democracia Deliberativa). Dicha concepciones enfrentan problemas serios a la hora de articular de manera consistente dos dimensiones que parecen ir naturalmente asociadas a la idea de legitimidad: la dimensión procedimental, vinculada a la equidad del procedimiento, y la dimensión epistémica, asociada a la corrección de los resultados. En este trabajo (...) sostengo que a) esa tensión surge de la adopción de una concepción epistemológica social de tipo "veritativo-consecuencialista; b) es posible manejar dicha tensión mediante el remplazo de la epistemología subyacente por una concepción epistemológica social de tipo procedimentalista de orientación pragmatista y c) dicha operación orienta el diseño institucional en una dirección experimentalista. (shrink)

It is often claimed that liberalism is falsely and perniciously universalist. I take this charge seriously, exploring three positions: the communitarians’, Rorty’s, and that of “comprehensive” liberalism. After explaining why universalism is thought impossible, I examine the communitarian view that value is determined within communities and argue that it results in a form of relativism that is unacceptable. I next discuss Richard Rorty’s liberal acceptance of “conventionalism” and explain how, despite his rejection of universalism, Rorty remains a liberal. I then (...) present a defense of universalism, based in part on arguments that parallel Thomas Nagel’s arguments in defense of a “view from nowhere” and Jean Hampton’s objectivist arguments against Rawls’s moves to a “merely political” theory. That defense requires that we can distance ourselves from our ends to make moral judgments shorn of all partialities. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel and John Dewey share commitments to philosophical theory and practice aimed at addressing human problems, democratic modes of inquiry, and progressive social reform, but also maintain productive differences in their fundamental starting point for political philosophy and their use of the social sciences. Dussel provides a corrective to Dewey’s Eurocentrism and to his tendency to underplay the challenges of incorporating marginalized populations by insisting that social and political philosophy begin from the perspective of the marginalized and excluded. Simultaneously, (...) Dewey encourages a modest experimental and fallibilist approach to social transformation that promises more feasible social reforms than Dussel’s approach rooted in phenomenology and the critical social sciences. (shrink)

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being as- sessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when I (...) say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? e present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”. (shrink)

The fact that someone is generous is a reason to admire them. The fact that someone will pay you to admire them is also a reason to admire them. But there is a difference in kind between these two reasons: the former seems to be the ‘right’ kind of reason to admire, whereas the latter seems to be the ‘wrong’ kind of reason to admire. The Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem is the problem of explaining the difference between the ‘right’ (...) and the ‘wrong’ kind of reasons wherever it appears. In this article I argue that two recent proposals for solving the Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem do not work. I then offer an alternative solution that provides a unified, systematic explanation of the difference between the two kinds of reasons. (shrink)

This article considers the extent to which the debate about animal rights can be enriched by Richard Rorty’s theory of rights. Although Rorty’s work has enjoyed a lot of scholarly attention, commentators have not considered the implications of his arguments for animals. Nor have theorists of animal rights engaged his approach to rights. This paper argues that Rorty’s thinking holds a number of attractions for proponents of animal rights. It also considers some of its drawbacks. It is further argued that (...) Rorty’s thinking about rights avoids many of the problems that animal ethic of care theorists have found in rights discourse being applied to animals. Rorty’s work thus provides a valuable resource for bringing these two major strands within the animal ethics literature into closer theoretical kinship. (shrink)

Images of vulnerability have populated the philosophical landscape from Hobbes to Hegel, Levinas to Foucault, often designating a sense of corporeal susceptibility to injury, or of being threatened or wounded and therefore have been predominantly associated with violence, finitude, or mortality. More recently, feminist theorists such as Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero have begun to rethink corporeal vulnerability as a critical or ethical category, one based on our primary interdependence and intercorporeality. However, many contemporary theorists continue to associate vulnerability with (...) violence and finitude rather than providing an account of the normative theory that might underpin vulnerability as a critical category. In this article, I explore an alternative notion of vulnerability in relation to both a theory of power and a normative account that draws on recognition theory. My aim in this article is twofold: first, to examine the complexity of vulnerability and how it relates to forms of recognition; second, to outline how the notion of vulnerability can operate as the basis for critiquing objectionable forms of vulnerability. This is to consider vulnerability not only as an ethical or ontological question but as a political one, and shifts arguments about its abuse and entanglement with power and violence to the public political sphere. (shrink)

Over the last decade, a call for greater “realism” in political theory has challenged the goals and methods that are implicit in much contemporary “normative” theory. However, realists have yet to produce a convincing alternative research program that is “constructive” rather than primarily “critical” in nature. I argue that given their common wariness of a devotion to abstract principles, realists should consider adopting John Dewey’s vision of theoretical expertise as an expansive kind of prediction that engages all of our historical, (...) scientific, and imaginative resources. After demonstrating that realists are in need of such an affirmative vision, I outline Dewey’s original proposal, and elaborate its value in contemporary circumstances as a “predictive” method for political theory that stands between familiar critical and normative approaches. (shrink)

Kolb discusses postmodern architectural styles and theories within the context of philosophical ideas about modernism and postmodernism. He focuses on what it means to dwell in a world and within a history and to act from or against a tradition.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. These original essays encompass the major topics and approaches in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and diversity while at the same time strengthening the conceptual arsenal of social and political philosophy. Over the course of the volume's ten topic-based sections, ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are (...) supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives and Native-, Asian-, and Latin-, American views. The contributors bring philosophical analysis to bear on the status of racial divisions as categories of humanity in the biological sciences, as well as within contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. Essays present the special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of 'race' in the real world, the volume pays trenchant and relevant attention to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that 'race' and racial identities are socially constructed. The essays analyze contemporary social issues including the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Additionally, the essays consider the societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law. As a critical theory, the volume compares the study of race to feminism. Historical and contemporary, academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration throughout the volume. While this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought. (shrink)

Feminist artworks can be a resource in our attempt to understand individual identities as neither singular nor fixed, and in our related attempts both to theorize and to practice forms of connection to others that do not depend on shared identities. Engagement with these works has the potential to increase our critical social consciousness, making us more aware of oppression and privilege, and more committed to overcoming oppression.

As one of the most influential commentators on the role of modern philosophy, Richard Rorty's work impacted all areas of philosophical inquiry, including business ethics. Rorty's post-foundational approach to "moral imagination" can inform how we teach business ethics in a diverse and philosophically eclectic manner. A summary of Rorty's critique of philosophy, ethics, and applied ethics will be followed by a discussion of the implications for a critical pedagogy and the pragmatic use of an expansive philosophical lexicon in a business (...) ethics course. (shrink)