Theoretical commentaries on AI often operate as a metadiscourse on the way in which science represents itself to a wider public. The sciences and humanities do the same kind of work but in different fields that encourage them to talk about their work differently: science refers to a natural world that does not talk back, and the humanities refer continually to a world with communicative people in it. This paper suggests that much AI commentary is misconceived because it models itself (...) on the way that science represents itself, rather than on the actual practice of science.AI theorists have become increasingly worried about the lack of evaluation in AI, the lack of reflexivity, and the lack of contact with society. Frequently these writers turn to concepts of tacit knowledge to work through these worries. In doing so they are recognising the problem of AI's second-order representation of science and trying to deal with it. However, this recognition of a problem with the representations of science simply turns back to the legitimation crisis of Western politics where many commentators use science precisely as a ‘model’ for western political institutions. They do so because science is one of the few areas of knowledge where it has been legitimate to use plausible methodology for representation that allows for arbitrary designations of authority as well as parallel systems of different authority. However, the plausible rejects any control on reflexivity, assumes an ethnocentric club culture and does not address social context.It is in this sense that the problems of legitimation in political liberalism are similar to those of legitimation in sciences, both are rooted in their uses of representation. AI's link with the representation of science places it in the heart of this debate about legitimacy. This paper suggests that AI does need to learn about reflexivity and that it might well do so by looking at the recent work on experimentation and representation by historians of science, and by looking to the debates about representation by historians of science, and by looking to the debates about representation within the humanities. However, reflexivity may not be enough. Devising rules of thumb for the appropriate halting of reflexivity, is also needed to address social context and take action. (shrink)

There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of the Cheng brothers' (...) neo-Confucianism, I shall explore how Confucianism can make creative responses to such criticisms and thus make a unique Confucian contribution to the emerging global ethics. (shrink)

We analyse solidarity as a mixture of social justice on the onehand and a set of cultural values and ascriptions on the otherhand. The latter defines the relevant sense of belonging togetherin a society. From a short analysis of the early stages of theDutch welfare state, we conclude that social responsibility wasoriginally based in religious and political associations. In theheyday of the welfare state, institutions such as sick funds,hospitals or nursing homes became financed collectively entirelyand became accessible to people of (...) all denominations. Solidaritywas transformed in a more general category, related to the statusof Dutch citizenship. Responsibility was transformed tocollective responsibility.Financial pressures on the Welfare State have resulted in adebate on choices in health care and in a number of systemreforms, so far relatively small. In the surrounding discourse,justice was linked to private responsibility. Both fromgovernment officials and from participants in the societaldebate, moralistic overtones could be heard concerning the threatof overburdening of the health care system by citizens.In this paper, we develop a concept of reflexive solidarity thatlinks elements of social justice to conceptualisations ofresponsibility that address policy makers and health careinstitutions as well as citizens, in their role of carereceivers. A short analysis of the phenomenon of personal budgetsin care services should prove that our concept of reflexivesolidarity is not empty. Linked to, but beyond the concept ofjustice, issues of social responsibility can be addressed withoutmoralistic overtones. (shrink)

Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society (translated by Naomi Goldblum).

Richard Feldman has argued that in cases of religious disagreement between epistemic peers who have shared all relevant evidence, epistemic rationality requires suspense of judgment. I argue that Feldman’s postulation of completely shared evidence is unrealistic for the kinds of disputes he is considering, since different starting points will typically produce different assessments of what the evidence is and how it should be weighed. Feldman argues that there cannot be equally reasonable starting points, but his extension of the postulate of (...) completely shared evidence to evidence for starting points involves an illicit assimilation of ordinary cases of evidence assessment to cases in which substantial agreement about background assumptions is lacking. I also clarify why even if Feldman were correct about what epistemic norms require, his conclusion would not show that we should actually suspend judgment about religious or anti-religious truth claims. (shrink)

In the target article, Brendel and Miller (2008) attempt to bring pragmatic insights to bear on research ethics through the approach called freestanding pragmatism that John Arras (2001) brought sq...

The consideration of how societies hold together and function as one with the coexistence of potentially conflicting ideas and commitments remains a topic of crucial importance. This paper advocates a renewed interest in the subject of loyalty as one of the bonds tying us together in society. It acknowledges that the nature of loyalty has often been seen as problematic, particularly where ties to some affect our abilities to make moral judgements. It purports that the area of conflicting loyalties needs (...) greater philosophical attention within our understanding of the moral life. Using two literary exemplars, Antigone and Lord of the Flies, the paper explores how loyalties play a fundamental part in our psyche and our social lives. With this in mind, it suggests that greater consideration should be paid to how schools should support children in coping with competing loyalties and with making judgements required by loyalty claims. (shrink)

Australian trade unions face the organizational and ethical challenge of advanced liberalism and its privileging of an enterprise culture, an ideological hegemony which unions, with their traditions of solidarity and collectivism, struggle to resist. While it has been argued that critical discourse studies offer a research methodology to develop politically engaged resistance strategies, CDS has not subjected the values and language of union mobilisation and class resistance to sufficient scrutiny. Employing discourse analysis to promote equality and workplace justice requires a (...) willingness to engage in a critical examination of what terms like class solidarity now mean in the context of enterprise culture. Foucault's stress on the power relationships embedded in discourse clarifies the history of solidarity and intensifies our critical analysis of the new discursive formations of enterprise culture which have stripped traditional union solidarity of its institutional basis and authority. Foucault's ethics, based in the notion of the care of the self, suggests that union claims to govern and represent the interests of their members can only be reinvigorated by applying the Socratic ideal of self-examination and self-transformation. (shrink)

A philosophical conception of open-minded inquiry first emerges in western philosophy in the work of Socrates. This paper develops an interpretation of Socratic open-mindedness drawing primarily on Socratic ideas about (i) the requirements of serious argument, and (ii) the nature of human wisdom. This account is defended against a number of objections which mistakenly interpret Socrates as defending, teaching, or inducing skepticism, and neglecting the value of expert wisdom. The ongoing significance of Socratic open-mindedness as an ideal of inquiry is (...) brought out through examination of a notorious Canadian case in the context of forensic pathology. (shrink)

In this paper, we review two seemingly unrelated debates. In business ethics, the argument is about values: are they universal or emergent? In entrepreneurship, it is about opportunities – are they discovered or constructed? In reality, these debates are similar as they both overlook contingency. We draw insight from pragmatism to define contingency as possibility without necessity. We analyze real-life narratives and show how entrepreneurship and ethics emerge from our discussion as parallel streams of thought.

This paper provides an alternative theoretical conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to further our understanding of prosocial organisational behaviour. We argue that consumption provides a perspective that enables theorists to escape the confines of existing CSR literature. In our view the organisation is re-imagined as an arena of consumption where employees are engaged in a quest for value, constructing and confirming their identities as consumers. Using the award-winning tour operator Laskarina Holidays as an illustrative case, it is (...) suggested that CSR can provide combinations of functional, social, emotional, epistemic and conditional value. This new perspective on CSR facilitates the coexistence of a plurality of values that are relativistically constructed and narrativised by organisational stakeholders. Our consumption paradigm provides a thought provoking means of reconciling divergent perspectives and encourages further interdisciplinary research. We argue that future research should begin, not by asking the question of why organisations assume responsibility, but by contemplating the notion of why organisations consume responsibility. (shrink)

This article offers a review of Richard Rorty’s attempts to come to terms with the role of religion in our public and intellectual life by tracing the key developments in his position, partially in response to the ubiquitous criticisms of his distinction between private and public projects. Since Rorty rejects the possibility of dismissing religion on purely epistemic grounds, he is determined to treat it, instead, as a matter of politics. My suggestion is that, in this respect, Rorty’s position is (...) best construed as that of a humanist rather than a post-modernist. Ultimately, it appears that, in his view, the positive element of religion—i.e. the idea of religion as a social gospel—has been absorbed and transformed into a utopian striving which humanists associate with the ideal of democracy. Hence, in this regard, religion can be considered obsolete. Yet, without explicitly invoking the usual epistemic grounds, Rorty’s arguments for excluding religion from the public sphere remain rather thin, and an interest in reforming rather than excluding religion would have been more consistent with his general outlook. (shrink)

The Philosophical Underpinnings of Social Constructionist Discourse Analysis Although discourse analysis emerges as a multi-faceted research method reflecting various schools of thought, disciplines and approaches, it is possible to pinpoint some meta-theoretical issues or fundamental assumptions common for most of them. This article aims to investigate different philosophical aspects and theoretical foundations that inform discourse analysis, such as the interplay between epistemological and ontological dimensions or the definition of language itself. Because space does not allow an in-depth discussion of all (...) the theoretical orientations collectively contributing to the development of social constructionist discourse analysis, this paper focuses on poststructuralist, constructivist, and social realist positions, and also attempts to trace the roots of social constructionism in linguistic philosophy, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Hopefully, this article will provide the opportunity to develop meta-theoretical reflections on discourse analysis, thus striking the balance between the philosophy, methodology and practice. (shrink)

Many philosophers of education emphasise the impossibility to really ‘solve’ philosophical—and with that, educational—problems these days. Philosophers have been trying to give philosophy a new, constructive turn in the face of this insolvability. This paper focuses on irony-based approaches that try to exploit the very uncertainty of philosophical issues to further philosophical understanding. We will first briefly discuss a few highlights of historical uses of irony as a philosophical tool. Then we concentrate on two different interpretations of irony, formulated by (...) Bransen and Rorty, that aim at gaining insight into how we make meaning of the world, while at the same time recognising that such an understanding would be impossible. After discussing some problematic aspects of these interpretations a third interpretation of irony is developed, based on a third view of the nature of meaning-making. Following these three interpretations, we will discuss their philosophical merits and the different kinds of insight they can produce for philosophy of education. (shrink)

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)

MacIntyre characterises liberal societies as suffering distinctive, structural forms of malaise: they are a ‘disaster’, a ‘moral calamity’, sites of ‘barbarism and darkness’. I argue that, whilst we well understand why MacIntyre thinks liberalism is false, it is unclear why this falsity should imply such moral catastrophe. I begin by motivating the question and distinguishing it from the classic liberal-communitarian debates (§§1-2). In particular, I highlight liberalism’s ability to offer ‘workarounds’, accommodating at least some of MacIntyre’s commitments and so forestalling (...) the prospect of moral disaster. I then introduce two arguments which supply the missing premises, in each case juxtaposing MacIntyre with other critics of liberalism. First, I argue that liberalism’s conception of the private sphere systematically marginalizes MacIntyre’s vision of pedagogy (§3). I compare the argument and the attendant conception of privacy with Adorno’s (§4). In §5, I introduce the second premise: I argue that liberalism espouses a conception of maturity that actively undermines MacIntyre’s model of development, subverting liberal ‘workarounds’. I contrast this claim with recent attacks on liberalism by Deneen. I close with some methodological implications: MacIntyre’s case against liberalism should be seen as a form of external, not immanent, critique. (shrink)

My view on what I see as the predicament of Christian philosophy in ethics has been shaped by a number of experiences. I will first share with you some of these experiences, to give you an impression of the background against which this article has been written.

My aim in this paper is to draw attention to a currently underdeveloped notion of pain and alienation, in order to sketch an account of the harms of ‘discursive abuse’. This form of abuse comprises systemic practices of violating a person’s vulnerable integrity as a knowing agent. Discursive abuse results in, what I would like to call, ‘agential alienation’. This particular genus of alienation, whose broad conceptual origins lie in the respective works of Hegel and the early Marx, involves an (...) agent being robbed of their self-conception as a rational inquirer and participant in a deliberative public sphere. Such alienation causes a particular kind of pain for an agent that often has harrowing material effects. (shrink)

The folklore of Groundhog Day is an invitation to reflect on continuity, choice, and reinvention in our daily lives. Groundhog Day is an annual opportunity to imagine how the future could unfold as a straightforward extension of what we are doing today in one another’s company, or as a departure from the typical course of our joined endeavors. The joined endeavor at issue in this paper is the act of justifying inclusion of the study of managerial practice, commonly called Management, (...) in the undergraduate college curriculum in the United States. Management is routinely shielded from a process of intellectual justification. There is a fruitful alternative to this de facto exemption. I argue that there is a place in the undergraduate curriculum for systematic attention to managerial practice, but that place need not be filled with a Management major per se. This new curricular place is anchored in the experience of living our everyday lives in a world managed by others. The inspiration for imagining this different place came one Groundhog Day, as I was sorting mail delivered to me by the US Postal Service. (shrink)

In discussing cruelty toward human beings, I argue that disregarding the singularity of any human being is necessary for treating her or him cruelly. The cruelty of Peter the Great, relying upon the intolerance of any human singular individuality, serves me as a paradigm-case to illustrate that. The cruelty of Procrustes and that of Stalin rely upon similar grounds. Relating to a person’s singularity is sufficient to prevent cruelty toward that person. In contrast, a liberal state of mind or solidarity (...) is insufficient to prevent cruelty and, under some circumstances, may even cause it. (shrink)

While most people may initially agree that justice is fairness, as an evangelical Protestant I argue that, for many religious comprehensive doctrines, the Rawlsean model does not possess the resources necessary to sustain tolerance in moral decision making. The weakness of Rawls's model centers on the reasonable priority of convictions that arise from private comprehensive doctrines. To attain a free and pluralistic society, people need resources sufficient to provide reasons to tolerate actions that are otherwise intolerable. In addition to arguing (...) for the deficiency of the Rawlsean political model, I sketch out a preliminary model of ambassadorship that offers religious communities, and in particular Protestant evangelicals, the necessary resources to engage the broader society tolerantly while maintaining their religious convictions. As a citizen of the church and a member of another kingdom, Christians serve as ambassadors to those who are not of the heavenly kingdom. I take this model to be more ambitious than that of a sojourner who lives in the land but is isolated as much as possible from society, while more modest than that of reconstructionists who seek to implement their own sacred law on all others. (shrink)

A British coffee chain’s fundraising practices constitute a background for this study to examine ideological discourses behind British charitable giving. The charity executes projects in coffee growing communities by providing education for children in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The study takes a critical stance from a discursive paradigmatic perspective to analyse visual contents used by the charity. The applied visual critical discourse analysis was inspired by Barthes’ semiotic theory. Findings suggest that the adverts’ interpretative repertoires can serve ideologies that sustain the donors’ (...) social-cultural dominance over the recipients by justifying group-based social hierarchies. The chains of signifiers do not question the spectators’ moral position but rationalise status quo and maintain undisturbed consumption. Findings suggest the possibility that the discourses of prosocial behaviour incited under consuming conditions do not challenge but may even justify global inequality. This finding presents challenges facing charitable organisations balancing their work within wider commercial and cultural contexts. (shrink)

In this paper, we first review recent arguments about the direct perception of the intentions and emotions of others, emphasizing the role of embodied interaction. We then consider a possible objection to the direct perception hypothesis from social psychology, related to phenomena like ‘dehumanization’ and ‘implicit racial bias’, which manifest themselves on a basic bodily level. On the background of such data, one might object that social perception cannot be direct since it depends on and can in fact be interrupted (...) by a set of cultural beliefs. We argue, however, that far from threatening the idea of direct perception, these findings clearly contradict the idea of hardwired theory of mind modules. More generally, we suggest that in order to further the understanding of social cognition we must take seriously insights about in-group and out-group distinctions and related phenomena, all of which are currently neglected in the mainstream social cognition literature. (shrink)

I argue for a broad education in narratives as a way to address several problems found in moral psychology and social cognition. First, an education in narratives will address a common problem of narrowness or lack of diversity, shared by virtue ethics and the simulation theory of social cognition. Secondly, it also solves the ?starting problem? involved in the simulation approach. These discussions also relate directly to theories of empathy with special significance given to situational empathy.

This article describes Chester Barnard, the author of The Functions of the Executive, one of the twentieth century’s most influential books on management and leadership. The book emphasizes competence, moral integrity, rational stewardship, professionalism, and a systems approach, and was written for posterity. Barnard emphasized the role of the manager as both a professional and as a steward of the corporation. His teachings drew on personal insights as a senior executive of AT&T, which saw good governance as the primary means (...) of winning public acceptance of its telecommunications monopoly. Barnard provided a conceptual scheme of the theory of organization based on the following structural concepts: the individual and bounded rationality, cooperation, formal organization, and informal organization. The principal dynamic concepts include communication, consent theory of authority, free will, the decision process, dynamic equilibrium and the inducement–contributions balance, and leadership, executive responsibility, and moral codes. (shrink)

The recent financial crisis has prompted questioning of our basic ideas about capitalism and the role of business in society. As scholars are calling for “responsible leadership” to become more of the norm, organizations are being pushed to enact new values, such as “responsibility” and “sustainability,” and pay more attention to the effects of their actions on their stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to open up a line of research in business ethics on the concept of “ authenticity (...) ” as it can be applied in modern organizational life and more specifically to think through some of the foundational questions about the logic of values. We shall argue that the idea of simply “acting on one’s values” or “being true to oneself” is at best a starting point for thinking about authenticity. We develop the idea of the poetic self as a project of seeking to live authentically. We see being authentic as an ongoing process of conversation that not only starts with perceived values but also involves one’s history, relationships with others, and aspirations. Authenticity entails acting on these values for individuals and organizations and thus also becomes a necessary starting point for ethics. After all, if there is no motivation to justify one’s actions either to oneself or to others, then as Sartre has suggested, morality simply does not come into play. We argue that the idea of responsible leadership can be enriched with this more nuanced idea of the self and authenticity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTNeoliberalism is a force that seeks to commodify the time of education. Time must be productive. We rank journals and reward scholars who produce work published in those highly ranked journals. In the process of commodifying the work of scholarship, we lose time to the logics of neoliberalism. In search of this lost time, we need allies and resources that allow us to resist and reclaim that which replenishes value. This paper makes the case that a vision of progress connected (...) to Dewey’s thought may preclude us from appreciating sources of value that deserve further attention. The paper is not an exercise in nostalgia and does not seek a return to values undergirded by tradition or traditional ways of thinking, but it does ask that we exercise vision so that we don’t turn our back on sources of resistance that lie waiting to be cultivated. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recently conceptualized and studied as a political phenomenon. Most debates in this scholarship have thus far focused on normative issues. Less attention has been paid to the explanatory potential of CSR research grounded in political theory and philosophy. In this article, we conduct a pragmatist reading of political scholarship on CSR and seek to deploy existing knowledge for research pursuing political explanation. We argue that the political ontologies that underlie scholarship on CSR can be (...) used to transform normative and descriptive research also for explanatory uses. We show how ontologies vary in terms of potential research objects and scopes of political explanation, and argue that the main types of political-ontological stances adopted in scholarship on CSR, foundational and post-foundational stances, offer explanatory analysis of different schematic guidelines. Our pragmatist reading of previous research and an empirical case illustration of political explanation of change in corporate responsibility in the biofuel industry demonstrate the opportunities, limitations, and challenges different political-ontological commitments provide for political explanation. (shrink)

A materialist view of economics presumes that from material possession flows the best of life’s satisfactions. A postmaterialist view claims instead that the best of human satisfactions come not just from material possessions but from the experience of life’s social, cultural and natural wonders as well. This article sets out a theory of postmaterial experience economics and uses survey research findings from the World Values Survey to establish whether or not postmaterial orientations to economic experience exist in global society and (...) whether Schwartz’s basic human values and Inglehart’s postmaterial values predict orientations to postmaterial experience. Expanded global participation in postmaterial experience matters economically because it can lead to increased unemployment from reduced demand for material goods if not off... (shrink)

Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics. We reconstruct practical judgments on basis of the self-reflexive capacities of human beings, and argue that for the subject to see himself (...) as committed to prudential goods it is necessarily implied that he understands himself as committed to moral judgment. However, to understand the normativity of understanding oneself as a being with practical commitments at all, the aesthetic judgment is introduced: the power of judgment in its pure form of selfreflexivity. We claim that aesthetic reflection and judgment is conditional on the possibility for human beings to enter the space of reasons, and therewith for practical self-understanding as such. The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch of different conceptual possibilities in fleshing out the role of the power of judgment in its aesthetic employment in developing mixed judgments. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 281-292, January 2022.

The overall objective of this dissertation is to study moral entrepreneurship within animal and business ethics in relation to moral change. In particular the current capability in bringing about moral change and its potential to do so.

The study analyzes the theoretical basis of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program elaborated by Matthew Lipman. The aim is, firstly, to identify the main philosophical and pedagogical principles of P4C based on American pragmatism, and to locate their pedagogization and possible problems in Lipman’s thinking. Here the discussion is especially targeted to the thinking of John Dewey and George H. Mead as well as Lev Vygotsky, whom Lipman himself names as the most pivotal sources for his own thinking. On (...) the other hand, the study aims at opening up new perspectives and thematizations on P4C from the viewpoint of the continental tradition of thought. The essential principles of P4C connected with reasonableness and judgment are ultimately interpreted as a neo-Aristotelian effort to contextualize philosophy by tracing it back to moderation, the man’s ability to consider and solve problems that he meets in practical life kata ton orthon logon — by doing right things in the right place at the right time in the right way. This phronetic idea of ‘humanizing modernity’ combined with the evolution of the adult-child concept is argued to be one of the conditions for the possibility of P4C, yet leaving unsolved the basic problems involving pedagogical action as such. John Dewey’s ideas arising from the critique of the modern philosophy of consciousness, focusing on the significance of philosophy in practical human life and linked to the basic nature of human knowing and intellectual growth and, further, to the ideal of a democratic community, are shown to form the main intellectual sources of P4C. Dewey’s philosophy as a general theory of education means a solid linking of the concepts of experience and inquiry to the practice of education. This is based on the naturalistic conception of man according to which man is built in dynamic transaction with his environment, experiencing the true meanings of his ideas in the consequences of his actions as he tries to solve problematic situations. So, inquiry as a method of reflective thinking forms the basis for education based on intellectual growth. A condition for it is a context meaningful for the child in which the paradigm of inquiry can be realized authentically. It is therefore important in education to provide circumstances that stimulate the child’s curiosity, initiating a process of inquiry that further enables, through the formation of reflective habits, the development of a democratic community. The purpose of the pedagogical interaction taking place in the process of inquiry is to produce educative experiences for the child, making the pedagogical relationship vanish at the same time. The idea is that in pedagogical action the child’s subjectivity, his desire and impulses are adapted to the tradition, yet generating at the same time a prospective, reflective habit, thus freeing the educatee to think intelligently for himself. The study shows the articulation of these principles in Lipman’s practical effort to convert the classroom into a community of inquiry, but it also argues that the above-mentioned Bildung theoretical core problem of pedagogical action, related to its paradoxical special characteristics to produce autonomous subjectivity, is not thematized. In connection with this issue, the educational thinking of Kant and Hegel is discussed especially from the viewpoint of philosophy teaching. To provide a new perspective for the discussion, the study outlines the community of inquiry as an ‘educative space’ from the viewpoints of the pedagogical relationship typical of hermeneutic pedagogy and of non-reflective functional structures and phenomena based on pedagogical intuition that are linked to it. (shrink)

Over 60 years ago, the influential language philosopher L. Wittgenstein suggested that there is no need to use "understanding" and "meaning" to understand how language works and, in fact, that the two theoretical terms are part of a primitive idea. Today, both remain two of the most frequently used terms in education. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate a discussion about abandoning these terms from the theoretical discourse of education in the way these are commonly used. Case materials (...) from the research literature chosen from a large database on knowing and learning in science are used to exemplify the approach that does not require either concept. Implications are drawn for education research and practice. (shrink)

This article analyzes the historical development of the philosophical logic syntax from the standpoint of the unity of historical and logical methods. According to this perspective, there are three types of logical syntax: the elementary subject-predicate, the modified definitivespecificative, and the standard propositional-functional. These types are generalized in the grammatical and mathematical styles of logical syntax. The main attention is paid to two scientific revolutions in elementary subject-predicate syntax, which led to the emergence of modified definitive-specific and standard propositional-functional syntaxes (...) and created the syntactic conditions for the development of contemporary philosophical logic. The specifics of contemporary philosophical logic and the methodological possibilities of its application to philosophical discourse are studied. The article aims to reevaluate the undeservedly forgotten systems of philosophical logic of the continental tradition, created by such prominent representatives as Aristotle, G.W.F. Hegel, and E. Husserl, and to actualize these logics in the context of contemporary philosophical culture. The potential of the above-mentioned logics is not fully involved in the philosophical discourse of modernity, primarily because they primarily used an imperfect elementary subject-predicate syntax and modified definitive-specificative syntax as its slightly improved version. Both syntaxes have one thing in common: the grammatical style of sentence structure. Nevertheless, they also have one common flaw – a high dependence on grammar formalism. As a result, the interaction between these syntaxes and Frege’s standard propositional-functional syntax is impossible, because the latter is based on mathematical formalism, which operates on the philosophical logic of the analytic tradition. The article substantiates the way to solve this problem by constructing a modified subject-predicate syntax of contemporary philosophical logic. This syntax provides information interaction between Aristotle’s elementary subject-predicate syntax, and Frege’s standard propositional-functional syntax based on Hegel’s modified definitive-specificative syntax. The proposed solution to this problem can create new opportunities for complementarity and mutual enrichment between the philosophical logic of continental and analytical traditions. The theoretical basis for the construction and study of contemporary philosophical logic is a functional analysis of contemporary symbolic logic, which improves the grammatical analysis of traditional formal logic. Functional-grammatical analysis is a way to rehabilitate the philosophical logic of the continental tradition. The novelty of this paper lies in the substantiation of the modified subjectpredicate syntax of contemporary philosophical logic. It makes it possible to establish a dialogue between continental and analytical traditions, which is designed to promote the further development of philosophy. (shrink)

In this thesis I discuss personal identity as it relates to authoritative contexts. I show how these contexts confer meaning on personal and cultural narratives, which in turn confer meaning on facts and knowledge claims. I outline three conceptions of the self and sublime, and address the implications of these for education. In conclusion I isolate a common product of all three perspectives---unconditional love---and recommend a 'will to positive description' as a necessary and desirable pedagogical goal.

I argue that factory farming should be abolished consistent with the principles of classical liberalism. To make my case, I first argue that anti-cruelty is a commitment of classical liberalism. In Section 3, I explain how the commitments of classical liberalism, including a commitment to anti-cruelty, give us weighty reasons to abolish factory farming. Then, I consider and respond to the objection that the property rights of factory farmers override the strength of reasons for the abolition of factory farming. Finally, (...) I conclude by flagging some other possible implications of taking seriously a liberal commitment to anti-cruelty. (shrink)

In this article, our aim is to examine the place of “reality” in Richard Rorty’s thought in view of the important and key discussion of language in the philosophy of this thinker. In other words, we know that with the occurrence of the “linguistic turn” in the middle of the twentieth century, the relationship between language and reality has become one of the central debates of philosophy, especially analytical philosophy, and has become of particular importance. Is it language that determines (...) the external reality for us? Is knowing the world outside the mind possible only through the possibilities that language gives us? And to what extent does the structure of language affect our cognitive pattern? These are only a part of the linguistic concerns that have occupied the minds of contemporary philosophers. The main concern and problem of the present article, which has been approached using a descriptive-analytical method, is to examine the relationship between language and reality in Richard Rorty’s thought and to show how he defends the linguistic structure of having reality. Rorty, following an analytical philosophy that, in addition to detailed analyses of traditional philosophical concepts, like the concepts of truth, meaning, necessity, etc. and by changing the discussion from experience to discussion from language in the direction of pragmatizing the basic principles of positivism, believes that it is trans-lingual and trans-temporal. The common denominator that Plato found in the outside world and transferred to man in the Cartesian-Kantian tradition is sought in analytic philosophy in language, and so analytic philosophers continue to pursue the traditional philosophy project of providing a trans-historical and eternal framework for the accurate representation of the world. Rorty tries to overcome this view of analytical philosophers with a Darwinist and pragmatic view of language and under the influence of philosophers such as Wittgenstein.For Darwinists, language is a tool among other tools that gives its users the ability to better and more efficiently adapt to their environment and meet their needs. For the likes of Wittgenstein and like-minded people, despite their many and sometimes profound differences, language had an important and pivotal place with its eventual and possibility feature. Influenced by thinkers such as Wittgenstein, and in the context of his Darwinist and pragmatic approach to language, Rorty attributes certain characteristics to language that can be said to influence his whole thought. Firstly, he considers language as a tool like other tools and, therefore, considers it to have no fixed nature and identity. Given that it is not possible to leave the language and on the other hand language has a poetic and metaphorical character, the function of language cannot be a representation of reality and reality can never be available to us naked and as independent of language and descriptions. Therefore, from Rorty’s point of view, reality is a linguistic and constructed matter of language that we humans have invented in cooperation with each other and in accordance with our historical-cultural situation and needs. Of course, Rorty’s point in saying that reality is made by language is by no means that we create reality arbitrarily and as we wish; rather, what is happening is that we are responding to an external stimulus, a response of various sentence types that manifests itself as linguistic reactions. (shrink)