My argument will proceed as follows. I will first sketch out the broad internalist case for pitching its normative account of sport in the abstract manner that following Dworkin’s lead in the philosophy of law its adherents insist upon. I will next show that the normative deficiencies in social conventions broad internalists uncover are indeed telling but misplaced since they hold only for what David Lewis famously called ‘coordinating’ conventions. I will then distinguish coordinating conventions from deep ones and make (...) my case not only for the normative salience of deep conventions but for their normative superiority over the abstract normative principles broad internalists champion. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine Rorty's contention that literary narrative, not political philosophy, is best able to address the problems of the West. It argues that although Rorty's conception of the novel as a valu able and informative medium is credible, he does not establish it as a valid alternative to political philosophy. Moreover Rorty retains the sort of reasoning that is characteristic of political philosophy, despite his assertions to the contrary.

Consider the following proposition: It is possible that all of our perceptual experiences are ‘delusive.’ According to Gilbert Ryle, is demonstrably absurd. In this paper I address four questions: What is Ryle’s argument against?; How persuasive is it?; What positions are ruled out if is absurd?; and How does Ryle’s position compare with contemporary work on skepticism?

The aim of this paper is to look at what a parallel deflationist program might be in the theory of knowledge and examine its prospect. In what follows I will simplify matters slightly by focussing on empirical knowledge rather than knowledge in general, though most of what I have to say ought to be applicable, mutatis mutandis, to knowledge in general. Moreover,note that it is not my aim to offer a full defense of a particular deflationist theory of knowledge, which (...) would go well beyond the scope of this paper, but only to defend the utility of taking the deflationist program as regards the theory of knowledge seriously by showing that there is a plausible deflationist position available that is worthy of further scrutiny. (shrink)

According to the instrumentalism of Friedman and Machlup it is irrelevant whether the explanatory principles or “assumptions” of a theory satisfy any criterion of “plausibility,” “realism,” “credibility,” or “soundness.” In this view the main or only criterion for selecting theories is whether a theory yields empirically testable implications that turn out to be consistent with observations. All we should require or expect from a theory is that it is a useful instrument for the purpose of prediction. Considerations of the “efficiency” (...) of a theory for the purpose of ordering our experiences are permitted, but considerations of “plausibility” are not. “Explanatory assumptions” are not really explanatory in the sense that they claim to represent underlying causal processes in reality; they only serve to generate, by deduction, implications that are in accordance with as many observations as possible. (shrink)

This survey article discusses the pragmatist tradition in twentieth century philosophy of science. Pragmatism, originating with Charles Peirce's writings on the pragmatic maxim in the 1870s, is a background both for scientific realism and, via the views of William James and John Dewey, for the relativist and/or constructivist forms of neopragmatism that have often been seen as challenging the very ideas of scientific rationality and objectivity. The paper shows how the issue of realism arises in pragmatist philosophy of science and (...) how some pragmatists, classical and modern, have attempted to deal with it. Various dimensions of the realism dispute are thus discussed, especially realism as contrasted to instrumentalism and realism as contrasted to relativism/constructivism. It is argued that the pragmatist tradition cannot avoid these tensions but is largely constituted by them. (shrink)

: Bereft of the illusion of an epistemic vantage point external to science, what should be our commitment towards the categories, concepts and terms of that very science? Should we, despaired of the possibility to found these concepts on rock bottom, adopt empiricist skepticism? Or perhaps the inexistence of external foundations implies, rather, immunity for scientific ontology from epistemological criticism? Philosophy's "realism debate" died out without providing a satisfactory answer to the dilemma, which was taken over by the neighboring disciplines. (...) The "symmetry principle" of the "StrongProgramme" for the sociology of science-the requirement that truth and error receive the same kind of causal explanations-offered one bold metaphysical answer, under the guise of a methodological decree. Recently, however, it has been argued that this solution is not bold enough, that the social constructivists replaced the naïve presumption of an independent nature which adjudicates our beliefs with a mirror-image presumption of a sui generis society which furnishes these beliefs autonomously. The proper metaphysics for a foundationless epistemology, argues Bruno Latour, is one which grants nature and society, object and subject, equal roles in the success and failure of science and technology; one in which history of society merges with a history of things-in-themselves. The paper analyzes the philosophical and methodological motivations and ramifications of this extraordinary suggestion. (shrink)

Although they may differ on the reason why, many philosophers hold that it is a priori that an object is red if and only if it is such as to look red to normal observers in normal conditions.

Mathematics is often defined as a “universal” or “conventional” language. Yet, things may be not as simple as that. The theoretical lens of the semiosphere, with the related notions of context and spatial dynamics, within which the concept of cultural conflict is defined, provides a new framework for research in mathematics education to consider the cultural aspects of mathematical discourses. It is under this framework that learning awareness occurs, and teaching challenges are no longer conceived as independent of the content (...) taught (or to be taught). It is not a question of nullifying the cultural conflict, but exploiting the concept of asymmetry to make sense of mathematical discourse. Meeting foreign cultures leads to looking at one’s own practices. An example drawn from Danish numerals, juxtaposed with a mathematical discourse occurring in a sixth-grade classroom in Italy, delves into the practical application of the framework. (shrink)

In her article in this volume Linda Martín Alcoff makes the case for a form of political epistemology that denaturalizes, in the sense of historically and socially situating, procedures of knowledge production and distribution. She pursues this project via a discussion of three twentieth-century thinkers (Horkheimer, Habermas and Foucault) who, she argues, pursued this form of political epistemology, albeit in different ways, and to different ends. In this article I pursue a similar project, but within a different tradition, one that (...) grows out of naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

This article responds to Richard Kilminster’s critique of my earlier article published in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, which raised questions about the status and limits of Norbert Elias’s sociology of knowledge. The article takes issue with Kilminster’s claim that the earlier piece identified “fatal” flaws in Elias’s approach and aimed at re-asserting philosophical authority over the social sciences. It is argued that, on the contrary, the earlier article was broadly sympathetic to Elias’s visions of both the sociology of knowledge (...) and of the social sciences more generally. However, some of the concepts that Elias regarded as central to these, especially the key notion of “social processes,” are highly problematic, and others have been superseded by more recent developments. This article also defends the need for “under-laboring” within the social sciences, arguing that it does not carry the kinds of connotations that Kilminster imagines. (shrink)

This paper aims (a) to provide characterizations of realism and instrumentalism that are philosophically interesting and applicable to economics; and (b) to defend instrumentalism against realism as a methodological stance in economics. Starting point is the observation that ‘all models are false’, which, or so I argue, is difficult to square with the realist's aim of truth, even if the latter is understood as ‘partial’ or ‘approximate’. The three cheers in favour of instrumentalism are: (1) Once we have usefulness, truth (...) is redundant. (2) There is something disturbing about causal structure. (3) It's better to do what one can than to chase rainbows. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre's expression of the “profound gratitude we all owe to Althusser for having brought French Marxism back into dialogue with the rest of French philosophy”, important as it may be for a host of reasons, did not try to make Althusser's philosophy particularly attractive to philosophers of science. However, the present selection of essays does precisely this: It is almost ideally designed to mark the beginnings of an effective encounter of this particular brand of “French Marxism” with philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

RésuméRichard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c'est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel est (...) mon propos principal. J'ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu'une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

For Richard Rorty the autonomy of philosophy and the idea of an ahistorical criterion of truth are ideas that stand or fall together. This article challenges that assumption. However, before proceeding to this criticism, it is necessary in this section of the article to provide some rudimentary exposition of Rorty's position.Richard Rorty wished to subjugate philosophy to history. He announced this position in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), and his opinion on this matter did not change substantially in (...) any subsequent work. He argued that although it might be interesting to read the great philosophical texts of the past as having something to say to us directly (as proposed by Ryle and Austin), or .. (shrink)

The concept of agency, defined counterfactually as the freedom to 'act otherwise', occupies a central place in much of contemporary social and political theory. In criticizing this concept of agency I deploy what I call an 'immanent critique', focusing upon Bhaskar's 'transcendental realism' and Rorty's anti-realist theory of linguistic contingency. Invoking Wittgenstein's argumentation from On Certainty, I go on to contend that agency and freedom cannot be 'known' in the way that social and political theorists assert. I proceed to criticize (...) Bhaskar's pro vision of transcendental realist foundations for Marxism, and Rorty's use of Wittgenstein. I argue that Bhaskar's conception of social critique and Rorty's defence of 'bourgeois liberal society' are both predicated on a similar notion of individuals' 'private' possession of agency and free choice. (shrink)

For the past two decades, the issue of the body and essentialism has dominated feminist theory. In general, it is assumed that the body has been devalued and repressed by the Western metaphysical tradition. In this article, I make two claims to the contrary. First, as poststructuralist theory has tirelessly demonstrated, Western thought has continually tried to ground thought in some foundational substance, such as the body. Second, the most provocative, fruitful and radical aspects of recent feminism and poststructuralism concern (...) the event of incorporeality. What makes incorporeality such an urgent issue is its tie with anti-foundationalism. If there is not a direct or proper passage between what is and what is thought, then thinking can be considered as a force or event in its own right. By disrupting the traditional philosophical series that ties thought to some grounding body, thinkers as diverse as Deleuze, Derrida, Irigaray and Foucault have opened the possibility of a theory of the incorporeal. (shrink)

This paper recognizes that we become bored in our post-modern, consumerist Western world and that boredom is related to this existence and hidden within it. Through Heidegger, it seeks to provide a way to structure our understanding of boredom and suggest ways of acknowledging its cause, and then to allow it to liberate our authentic appreciation of the world of our workplace and what can be learnt through it. Using the approach of focusing on being in a societal workplace environment, (...) and the link to Heidegger’s notion of mood, revealed in Being and Time, boredom’s fundamental role is shown as a complex temporal manifold. Our superficial attempts to deal with things in datable time means that we miss the essential importance of the temporal manifold through which our being is revealed and where the Augenblick, (moment of vision) is the authentic present and temporalises itself of the authentic future (Heidegger in Being and time (trans: J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson). Blackwell, Oxford, 1962 , p. 338). For Heidegger this is to be understood as ecstasis (ibid, p. 338) when the resolute Dasein “is carried away to whatever possibilities and circumstances are encountered (ibid, p. 338). Such resoluteness enables the private capabilities to arise in public practice, not, however, in the conformity of what ‘one does’ (Das Man) but as an authentically choosing being. The challenge of an ontological pedagogy, regardless of its place of revelation that this prescribes a possibly be edifying mission for Dasein. Instead of chasing away boredom through busyness, a moment of vision could produce creative and authentic ways of being. (shrink)

Debates about nonconceptual content impact many philosophical disciplines, including philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. However, arguments made by many philosophers from within the pragmatist tradition, including Quine, Sellars, Davidson, Rorty, and Putnam, undercut the very role such content purportedly plays. I explore how specifically Sellarsian arguments against the Given and Rortian defenses of “epistemological behaviorism” undermine standard conceptions of nonconceptual content. Subsequently, I show that the standard objections to epistemological behaviorism inadequately attend to the essentially social and (...) practical nature of justification. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, philosophy came to be dominated by the English-speaking world, first Britain and then the United States. Accompanying this development was an unprecedented professionalization and specialization of the discipline, the consequences of which are surveyed and evaluated in this article. The most general result has been a decline in philosophy's normative mission, which roughly corresponds to the increasing pursuit of philosophy in isolation from public life and especially other forms of inquiry, including ultimately its own history. This (...) is how the author explains the increasing tendency, over the past quarter-century, for philosophy to embrace the role of "underlaborer" for the special sciences. Indicative of this attitude is the long-term popularity of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argues that fields reach maturity when they forget their past and focus on highly specialized problems. In conclusion, the author recalls the history of philosophy that, following Kuhn's advice, has caused us to forget, namely, the fate of Neo-Kantianism in the early twentieth century. Key Words: analytic philosophy • normative • positivism • pragmatism • professionalism • underlaborer. (shrink)

Recent studies in conservation biology have provided the wilderness preservation movement with a spark. Wilderness, we are told, can no longer be seen as a scenic playground for weary humans - it is, rather, an ecological necessity for the conservation of biodiversity. This paper traces the science and political ideologies that inspire and inform this reinvigorated cadre of environmentalists. Through empirical investigations of one prominent conservation group and one conservation campaign, the author finds that this environmentalism offers simplistic and purportedly (...) self-evident solutions to the complex problems of biodiversity and wilderness conservation. (shrink)

“Naturalized epistemology” is a recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. Traditional epistemologists object to this proposal on the grounds that it eliminates the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this thesis, I argue that traditional philosophers are justified in their reluctance to accept naturalism, but that their ongoing inability to refute it points to deeper problems inherent in traditional epistemology. I establish my thesis first by critiquing three versions of naturalism, showing that (...) each version either fails to implement its objectives consistently or starts from dubious objectives. “Optimistic naturalism” attempts to use naturalistic methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions (such as by affirming that our beliefs can be justified). This fails because the form of traditional questions requires the concept “belief,” a concept that I argue naturalistic methodology cannot countenance (because of the severe constraints of naturalistic semantic theory). “Pessimistic naturalism,” the version advocated by Quine, is more consistent with naturalistic methodology, but fails because hidden behind its conclusions are assumptions (such as the underdetermination thesis) that cannot themselves be naturalized in the full context of scientific evidence. A final attempt to naturalize epistemology, deflationary naturalism, dispenses with traditional questions entirely, urging that the terms “knowledge” and “justification” be taken as mere pragmatic devices whose use can, nevertheless, be studied scientifically. Curiously, this view fails to take account of important facts about the actual use of those terms, as studied by psychologists. In the end, despite problems with each of these versions, traditional philosophers can learn something from their encounter with naturalism. In the course of showing how various naturalistic doctrines cannot themselves be naturalized, I identify the flaws in traditional epistemology (such as its reliance on a priorism, and its resulting inability to articulate a workable empirical foundationalist theory of justification) that make naturalism harder to challenge. These flaws must be corrected if philosophers are to preserve the autonomy of their discipline. (shrink)

Tyler Burge says that first-person authority can be reconciled with anti-individualism about the intentional by denying part of the "Cartesian conception" of authority, which claims that I am actually authoritative about my intentional attitudes in counterfactual situations. This clause, he says, wrongly conflates the evaluation-conditions for sceptical doubts about the "external" world with the conditions for classifying intentional attitudes in counterfactual situations. This paper argues that the kind of possibility needed to understand external-world scepticism justifies the conflation and that Burge (...) can reject the Cartesian conception only if he rejects either metaphysical realism or anti-individualism. (shrink)

Pragmatic theories of truth need to pass the pragmatic test: they need to make a difference. Unfortunately, defenders of the pragmatic theory have rarely applied this test. I argue that a Deweyan pragmatic account of truth passes the test by identifying the political and epistemic dangers of certain types of social networks that create a durable consensus around false beliefs. To better understand Dewey’s account of truth I propose an excursion through Wittgenstein’s later views on knowledge and certainty.

This article introduces a new, performative framework for analysing intellectuals and intellectual interventions. It elaborates on the strengths of this theoretical perspective vis-à-vis rival approaches and develops this frame of reference by exploring key constituent concepts, including positioning, script and staging. The article then exemplifies the framework and demonstrates its applicability by exploring a public intellectual performance by Jean-Paul Sartre. To conclude, the article reflects on recent shifts in public intellectual performances, especially changes that are relatively durable and connected to (...) the rise of new media. (shrink)

This paper views Bernard Williams through the lens of the pragmatist tradition. The central insight of pragmatism is that philosophy must start with human practice, in contrast to high theory or metaphysics. Williams was one of the twentieth century’s most able proponents of this insight, especially when considering the topics of ethics and the law. Williams never saw himself as a pragmatist, because he took Richard Rorty’s radical relativism to be the exemplar of the position. But I shall suggest that (...) had Williams seen himself as a more objective pragmatist, along the lines of C. S. Peirce, C. I. Lewis, or Frank Ramsey, he might have had the resources to settle vital issues on which he wavered, issues having to do with whether there is anything objective underpinning our deliberations. (shrink)

What is the concept of knowledge for? What does it do for us? This question cannot be severed from considerations about what we do by using it. In this paper, I propose to view the point of our concept of knowledge in terms of a device for acknowledging epistemic authority in a social and normative space in which we share valuable information. It is our way of collectively expressing the acknowledgment we owe to others because of their being creditable when (...) engaged in the task of knowing. By using the concept of knowledge we are not just marking the epistemic positions we occupy, we are also acknowledging epistemic authority and indicating the advisability of taking oneself or others as “ready” for the transmission of authority. (shrink)

The aim of this research is to reconstruct a metaphysical interpretation of the philosophy of history with regard to the spirit of historical thinking. The spirit of historical thinking is to emphasize the relation between what happened in the past and historical thinking about the past in the present. However, current philosophies of history, which are largely epistemologically oriented, have not adequately explored this relation. In order to investigate the relation between past and present, I refer to an Aristotelian philosophy (...) of practice and politics, and adapt it to the domain of the philosophy of history, and argue the case for a metaphysical science of history. A metaphysical science of history contains two primary parts. They are the part on physis and the part on technê/phronēsis. With regard to physis that metaphysically investigates the natural generating progress of entities, I argue that the existence of historical events can be understood as a natural developing progress in which the events are ordered in a chronological sequence. Such chronological sequence is essentially the physis of history in the metaphysical sense. For the part on technê/phronēsis, I demonstrate that Aristotelian knowing is for itself an action of knowing, which is located beyond a given temporal position in the past to both the past and the thinking present, and indicates the fundamental Beingness of history. Finally I conclude that the historical eudaimonia, namely the pursuing of the completeness of historical knowledge, is the final presentation of actualizing Geschehenszeit, as it bridges the past and the present in accordance to the spirit of historical thinking. (shrink)

I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself: ‘I destroy, I destroy, I destroy…’Context: The ‘linguistic turn’ of Western philosophy ; and correlatively, the decline of universalist discourses. The weariness with regard to ‘theory’, and the miserable slackening that goes along with it. The time has come to philosophize.…there is no danger of philosophy's ‘coming to an end’. Religion did not come to an end in the Enlightenment, nor painting in Impressionism. Even if the period from Plato (...) to Nietzsche is encapsulated and ‘distanced’ in the way Heidegger suggests, and even if twentieth‐century philosophy comes to seem a stage of awkward transitional backing and filling, there will be something called ‘philosophy’ on the other side of the transition. (shrink)

This paper explains the nature and role of common sense in Reid and uses the exposition to answer some of Reid's critics. The key to defending Reid is to distinguish between two kinds of priority that common sense beliefs are supposed to enjoy. Common sense beliefs enjoy epistemological priority in that they constitute a foundation for knowledge; i.e. they have evidential status without being grounded in further evidence themselves. Common sense beliefs enjoy methodological priority in that they constrain philosophical theory: (...) they serve as pre-theoretical commitments that philosophical theories ought to respect in the absence of good reasons for rejecting them. (shrink)

A number of significant contributions in the last four decades show that non-normal modal logics can be fruitfully employed in several applied fields. Well-known domains are epistemic logic, deontic logic, and systems capturing different aspects of action and agency such as the modal logic of agency, concurrent propositional dynamic logic, game logic, and coalition logic. Semantics for such logics are traditionally based on neighbourhood models. However, other model-theoretic semantics can be used for this purpose. Here, we systematically study multi-relational structures, (...) whose investigation is still relatively underdeveloped. After a brief introduction to two different versions of multi-relational semantics – which we call strong and weak multi-relational semantics – we proceed to study several modal schemata. Special attention is paid to the schemata CON and D. Finally we offer completeness proofs for several systems using both strong and weak semantic tools: The proofs thus cover both classical system.. (shrink)

Hoewel misschien minder dan vroeger, zijn velen van ons op zoek naar waarheid, of ‘de’ waarheid . We beseffen dat het ‘hebben’ van waarheid een groot goed is. We beseffen ook dat waarheid, of ‘de’ waarheid, soms of vaak, moeilijk te achterhalen is: het is een soms of vaak ongrijpbaar goed. Wie echter geen volslagen scepticus is kan in beginsel lijsten aanleggen van beweringen waarvan hij weet dat ze waar zijn, beweringen waarvan hij weet dat ze onwaar zijn, maar ook (...) van beweringen waarvan hij niet weet of ze waar dan wel onwaar zijn. (shrink)

This paper makes the case that environmental education needs to be taken up as a moral education to the extent that we see the connection between harm and destruction in the environment and harm and destruction within human individuals and their relationship, and proceeds to show this connection by introducing the key notion of human alienation and its psychological factors of wounding, dissociation or split, self and other oppression and exploitation, all of which result in compromised moral agency. To this (...) end, the paper further makes the case that we need to replace the culture of alienation with a culture of healing and reclamation of fundamental humanity manifest as compassion and wisdom, and presents an ideal of moral agency that would emerge when all parts and dimensions of one’s being—body–mind–heart–energetics—are aligned, attuned and integrated, having healed from the body–mind split, mind–heart split, body–spirit split and mind–matter split. Concepts and imagery borrowed from Asian philosophies, such as Buddhism and Daoism, are offered as illustrative resources for the project of reclaiming uncompromised moral agency and its manifestation through compassion and wisdom. These concepts include hungry ghosts, bodhicitta, sunyata and wu-wei. (shrink)