When assessing North American students' oral participation in classes, should all students be subject to the same evaluation criteria or should teachers make reasonable allowances for Asian students practicing humility? How do we weigh the promotion of 'courage' through character education initiatives with traditional Asian dispositions? Viewing Asian humility in Western classrooms and as it rubs up against liberal principles of equality or justice, and a virtue ethic raises a number of philosophical questions around authenticity, polyvalence, and relativity. I approach (...) first through the lens of liberal philosophy as the 'dilemma of diversity' meets a boundary with communitarianism, and then through the contextualist lenses of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Foucault. Drawing on Tully's political philosophy, I inspect humility as embedded in language-games and then open it to revision through comparative history, inviting participants in the teacher's game of assessment to renegotiate the rules: a process complicated by their reticence to speak up. I also use Medina and Scheman's political reading of Wittgenstein to discuss how teachers can discern humility as performative silence within the classroom, distinguishing between genealogical accounts that show how comportments could be otherwise from perspicuous inspection of interconnected language-games in current educational settings. (shrink)

A common tactic in public debates over science and technology is to dismissively label innovations as mere technological fixes. This tactic can be readily observed in the long debate over agricultural biotechnology. While these criticisms are often superficial rhetorical tactics, they point to deeper philosophical disagreements about the role of technology in society. Examining the technological fix criticism can clarify these underlying philosophical disagreements and the debate over biotechnology. The first part of this essay discusses the origins of the notion (...) of a technological fix and distinguishes two types of technological fix criticisms, philosophical and practical. These distinctions are then applied to clarify and evaluate arguments for and against agricultural biotechnology. This analysis should clarify the debates over agricultural biotechnology and bring to light fundamental philosophical differences over the role of technology in agriculture. (shrink)

This extended abstract critically exams the use of the terms "rigorous" and "soft" in the context of engineering modeling. Common usage of the terms is contrasted with Toulmin's notion of "reasonableness" and Schoen's notion of "reflective practice." The abstract continues by considering an economic model of models in engineering, suggesting that overly "rigorous" engineering practice may box itself into being unable to afford the models it values, thereby presenting a conundrum for the practice and teaching engineering that demands relaxation.

In this paper I take my cue from what I suggest calling “the Adamitic modernity.” By this phrase I endeavor to capture a specific ‘removal’ of childhood that occurs in the Cartesian gesture of the enthroning of Reason. By drawing upon a reading of the major philosophical works of Descartes, I will argue that one of the main thrusts of his conceptual device is a deep-seated, and even anguished, mistrust of childhood and its errors. To put it in a nutshell: (...) in the Cartesian modernity philosophy/science and childhood are at odds with each other. In the second step of my argumentation, I will show in what sense Dewey rehabilitates childhood and its form of experience by, thus, healing the rift between childhood and science. This notwithstanding, Dewey was not ready to take the decisive step of thinking of a philosophy for children. Precisely by activating and developing the significance of qualitative thought, Matthew Lipman was able, instead, to progress beyond Dewey. In this perspective, I will show how Lipman and Ann Sharp, while walking in Dewey’s footsteps as far as their non-Cartesian interpretation of childhood is concerned, part company with him in their educational take on philosophy and on how this results in a revamping of the way of construing the Deweyan relationship between the child and the curriculum. (shrink)

In this essay, I focus on the initial reaction of the then leadership of the Academy of Management to President Trump’s travel ban issued in January 2017. By viewing the travel ban in purely administrative terms, AOM leadership framed it as an example of “political speech”, on which they were organizationally barred to take a public stand. I subject this view to critical assessment, arguing that the travel ban had a distinct moral character, which was antithetical to scholarly values. Τhe (...) travel ban, I suggest, should be viewed as a non-prototypical case of political speech, which required AOM leadership to flexibly adapt existing rules in situ: to imaginatively frame the travel ban in order to undertake responsible action. Accordingly, the early 2017 AOM rules about political speech should be seen not as recipes-for-action but as reminders-for-action, thus allowing an imaginative reframing. Finally, exploring the notion of moral imagination, I distinguish between “disclosive” and “incremental” moral imagination and responsibility, and suggest that AOM leadership engaged mainly in the latter. (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)

While feminist philosophy has had much to say on the topic of reason, little has been done to develop a specifically feminist account of the concept. I argue for a virtue account of mind grounded in contemporary approaches to rationality. The evolutionary stance adopted within most contemporary theories of mind implicitly entails a rejection of central elements of Cartesianism. As a result, many accounts of rationality are anti-modern is precisely the sorts of ways that feminists demand. I maintain that a (...) virtue account of rationality can provide a satisfactory answer to Benhabib’s question in Situating of the Self: what concept of reason are we willing to defend? (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

In this chapter we first discuss the main principles of justice and note the standard objections to them, which we believe necessitate a hybrid approach. The hybrid account we defend is primarily based on the distributive principle of sufficientarianism, which we interpret as the idea that each country should have the means to provide a minimally decent quality of life for each of its citizens. We argue that sufficientarian considerations give good reason to think that what we call the ‘ability (...) to pay objection’ should be taken much more seriously in this debate. Following this, our account emphasises what we believe are the two most important moral desiderata in any attempt to distribute responsibility for dealing with climate change: the ability to mitigate the problem and the making of culpable contributions to the problem. After noting that our proposal includes enough detail to be a useful start for policy makers, we defend our account against some potential objections. (shrink)

Argumentation logicians have recognized a specter of relativism to haunt their philosophy of argument. However, their attempts to dispel pernicious relativism by invoking notions of a universal audience or a community of model interlocutors have not been entirely successful. In fact, their various discussions of a universal audience invoke the context-eschewing formalism of Kant’s categorical imperative. Moreover, they embrace the Kantian method for resolving the antinomies that continually vacillates between opposing extremes – here between a transcendent universal audience and a (...) context-embedded particular audience. This tack ironically restores the very external mediation they thought to obviate in their aim to ‘dethrone’ the absolutism and totalitarianism of formal logic with a democratic turn to audience adherence, the acceptability of premises and inferential links, and a contextual, or participant-relative, notion of cogency. (shrink)

Starting from a suggestion of Stephen Toulmin and through an interpretation of the criticism to which Neurath, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle, submits Descartes’ views on science, the paper attempts to outline a pattern of modernity opposed to the Cartesian one, that has been obtaining over the last four centuries. In particular, it is argued that a new alliance has to be established between science and education, overcoming Descartes’ banishment against education. In a Neurathian perspective education is (...) a key-moment of the scientific enterprise without which science itself is in danger of going astray and no scientific outlook is promoted in the society at large. Such an anti-Cartesian attitude is a leitmotiv of the whole Neurath’s production and characterizes his fundamental approach to the sense of modernity. For this reasons, despite all its shortcomings, Neurath’s proposal represents a very promising option for a new agenda of the modernity away from Descartes’ spell. By elaborating on Neurath’s (and Dewey’s) insights, the paper puts forward the idea that philosophy of science (such as it was originated by neopositivism in its Reichenbachian version) should give way to an educational philosophy of science which could allow us “to bring the genuine modern into existence”. (shrink)

It is supposedly easier to connect with other human beings in the era of ubiquitous technology. Connecting requires action and an element of risk taking in a context of dynamic uncertainty and incomplete information. The article explores what is involved in developing sustainable connections. We reflect on the context of “Socially Useful Artificial Intelligence”, the focus of the first article in issue 1.1.1987 of AI & Society, and explore subsequent research in a changing world. The arguments are illustrated through an (...) account of the development of the Penny University, from a London coffee house to a potential international virtual institution. (shrink)

This paper describes the development of pragma-dialectics as a theory of argumentative discourse. First the development of the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion is explained, with the rules that are to be complied with in order to avoid fallacies from occurring. Then the integration is discussed of rhetorical insight in the dialectical framework. In this endeavour, the concept of strategic manoeuvring is explained that allows for a more refined and more profoundly justified analysis of argumentative discourse and a better (...) identification of fallacies. The paper ends with a brief overview of current research projects. (shrink)

Economic competitive advantage depends on innovation, which in turn requires pushing back the frontiers of various kinds of knowledge. Although understanding how knowledge grows ought to be a central topic of epistemology, epistemologists and philosophers of science have given it insufficient attention, even deliberately shunning the topic. Traditional confirmation theory and general epistemology offer little help at the frontier, because they are mostly retrospective rather than prospective. Nor have philosophers been highly visible in the science and technology policy realm, despite (...) philosophy’s being a normative discipline. This paper suggests a way to address both deficits. Creative scientists, technologists, business managers, and policy makers face similar problems of decision-making at their respective frontiers of knowledge. These areas should therefore be fertile ground for both epistemologists and philosophers concerned with policy. Here I call attention to the importance of heuristic appraisal for “frontier epistemology” and to policy formation. Evaluation of the comparative promise or expected fertility of available options comprises a cluster of activities that cut across traditional discovery/justification and descriptive/normative distinctions. The study of weak modes of reasoning and evaluation is especially relevant to socio-economic policy. (shrink)

Previous theory and research on bounded rationality has emphasized how limited cognitive resources constrain people from making utility maximizing choices. This paper expands the concept of bounded rationality to consider how people’s rationality may be constrained by their internalization of a qualitatively distinct standard for sound judgment, which is commonly labeled reasonableness. In contrast to rationality, the standard of reasonableness provides guidance for making choices in situations that involve balancing incommensurable values and interests or reconciling conflicting points-of-view. We review recent (...) evidence showing that laypeople readily recognize the distinctions between rationality and reasonableness and thus are able to utilize these as distinct standards to inform their everyday decision-making. The fact that people appear to have internalized rationality and reasonableness as distinct standards of sound judgment supports the notion that people’s pursuit of rationality may be bounded by their determination to also be reasonable. (shrink)

Hyde claims that the trickster spirit is necessary for the renewal of culture, and that he lives only in the ‘complex terrain of polytheism’. Fortunately for those of us in monotheistic cultures, Weber gives reasons for thinking that polytheism is making a return, albeit in a new, disenchanted form. The plan of this paper is to elaborate some basic notions from Weber, to explore Hyde’s thesis in more detail and then to take up the question of the plurality of spirits (...) both around and within us and whether the trickster is one of them. Weber has three roles in this argument. First, he theorises rationalisation, disenchantment and bureaucracy; second, he offers an argument that in a certain sense polytheism is returning ; and third, he presents a way to translate the mytho-poetic register in which Hyde works into terms acceptable to social science of a more materialist bent. The claim of the paper is that polytheism as a practical attitude means recognising that there are diverse and contradictory ethical orders built into the world around us and active with our psyches. Weber explains why this is especially difficult for us, and Hyde offers us the hope that we may be tricky enough to cope. (shrink)

According to van Eemeren, argumentation theory is a hybrid discipline, because it requires a multidisciplinary, if not interdisciplinary approach, combining descriptive and normative insights. He points out that modern argumentation theorists give substance to the discipline by relying either on a dialectical perspective, concentrating on the reasonableness of argumentation, or on a rhetorical perspective, concentrating on its effectiveness. Both the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective are interpreted in ways related to how they were viewed by Aristotle, but in modern argumentation (...) theory the relationship between the two, captured in Aristotle’s term antistrophos, is lost. According to van Eemeren, this relationship, which he considers crucial to a full-fledged argumentation theory, has been recovered in extended pragma-dialectics with the help of the theoretical notion of ‘strategic manoeuvring.’. (shrink)

Ludwig Boltzmann’s work in theoretical physics exhibits an approach to the construction of theory that he transmitted to the succeeding generation by example. It involved the construction of clear models, allowed more than one, and was not based solely on the existing facts, with the intent of examining and criticizing the assumptions that made each model work. This tacit program influenced physicists like Ehrenfest and Einstein and the philosopher Wittgenstein, suggesting ways that they used to make further advances.

In clinical practice, decision-making is not performed by individual knowers but by an assemblage of people and instruments in which no one member has full access to every piece of evidence. This is due to decision making teams consisting of members with different kinds of expertise, as well as to organisational and time constraints. This raises important questions for the epistemology of medicine, which is inherently social in this kind of setting, and implies epistemic dependence on others. Trust in these (...) contexts is a highly complex social practice, involving different forms of relationships between trust and reasons for trust: based on reasons, and not based on reasons; based on reasons that are easily accessible to reflection and others that are not. In this paper, we focus on what it means to have reasons to trust colleagues in an established clinical team, collectively supporting or carrying out every day clinical decision-making. We show two important points about these reasons, firstly, they are not sought or given in advance of a situation of epistemic dependence, but are established within these situations; secondly they are implicit in the sense of being contained or nested within other actions that are not directly about trusting another person. The processes of establishing these reasons are directly about accomplishing a task, and indirectly about trusting someone else’s expertise or competence. These processes establish a space of reasons within which what it means to have reasons for trust, or not, gains a meaning and traction in these team-work settings. Based on a qualitative study of decision-making in image assisted diagnosis and treatment of a complex disease called pulmonary hypertension, we show how an intersubjective framework, or ‘space of reasons’ is established through team members forging together a common way of identifying and dealing with evidence. In dealing with images as a central diagnostic tool, this also involves a common way of looking at the images, a common mode or style of perception. These frameworks are developed through many iterations of adjusting and calibrating interpretations in relation to those of others, establishing what counts as evidence, and ranking different kinds of evidence. Implicit trust is at work throughout this process. Trusting the expertise of others in clinical decision-making teams occurs while the members of the team are busy on other tasks, most importantly, building up a framework of common modes of seeing, and common ways of identifying and assessing evidence emerge. It is only in this way that trusting or mistrusting becomes meaningful in these contexts, and that a framework for epistemic dependence is established. (shrink)

This paper examines whether philosophers of argument, in spite of their disavowing ‘timeless principles’, nevertheless embrace a set of principles, or axioms, to underlie argumentation theory. First, it reviews the thinking of some prominent philosophers of argument; second, it extracts some principles common to their philosophies; and third, it draws out possible consequences for argumentation theory and asks whether such theory has an underlying political posture.

Skeptics argue that statements about right and wrong are merely expressions of preferences. They are mistaken; values are not the same as mere preferences. When we assert preferences that affect others, we justify our actions by giving reasons that we believe others should accept. When we evaluate those reasons, we typically reject certain preferences as illegitimate. Values are different from preferences because they entail demands we feel entitled to make of each other, after critical reflection. But this does not require (...) us to become moral realists who base value judgments on the existence of moral facts. Critical normativity adopts the paradoxical stance that value judgments are based on human will but that they can be right or wrong. Human beings cannot live without strong normative claims but we are obligated to be careful about them. This article illustrates this stance by telling three parables of justice. (shrink)

An individual's beliefs can be seen as rationally related to one another in a kind of web. These beliefs, however, may not form a single, seamless web. There may exist smaller, largely self-contained webs with few or no rational relations to the larger web. Such “webs of faith” make it possible for reasonable deliberators to persist in a disagreement even under ideal deliberative conditions. The possibility of reasonable disagreement challenges the assumption that rationality should lead to consensus and presents an (...) obstacle to the goals of liberal democracy. (shrink)

“Morality is relative to culture” is a descriptive claim; many people in many different cultures have different moral beliefs. When one adopts moral relativism, however, the claim accrues a normative dimension, in that what follows from relativity is the flattening out of rightness, of one moral belief being better than another regardless of culture. But in practice, humans rarely, if ever, actually behave as if certain things or beliefs are not better than others, as evidenced in everything from foreign policy (...) to religion to consumption choices. This leads to a problem of consistency: either the relativist does not act in accordance with her beliefs or her beliefs are different from what she espouses. Or so a.. (shrink)

This discussion reviews the thinking of some prominent philosophers of argument to extract principles common to their thinking. It shows that a growing concern with dialogical pragmatics is better appreciated as a part of applied ethics than of applied epistemology. The discussion concludes by indicating a possible consequence for philosophy of argument and invites further discussion by asking whether argumentation philosophy has an implicit, underlying moral, or even political, posture.

I examine what I shall call meta-philosophy: a philosophical examination into what philosophy is, can be, should be, something of what it has been, what the point (if any) of it is and what, if anything, it can contribute to our understanding of and the making sense of our lives, including our lives individually and together, and of the social order in which we live.

One can extrapolate from the art of language instruction to discover methods applicable across the disciplines in higher education. The paradigm presented by language instruction is applicable throughout the arts and sciences. If cultivated—and there are institutional pressures working against it—such an art can impact the languages and codes of the individual disciplines so as to advance the research mission of scholars in those fields; it can also favor the interrelationships between the disciplines. How the student learns another language (L2) (...) is comparable to the process of learning a scientific discipline. (shrink)

Debate over the closure of DeVasco High School shows that data-driven accountability was a methodological and administrative processes that produced both transparency and opacity. Data, when applied to a system of accountability, produced new capabilities and powers, and as such were political. It created second-hand representations of important objects of analysis. Using these representations administrators spoke on behalf of the school, the student and the classroom, without having to rely on the first-person accounts of students, teachers or principals. They empowered (...) one group—central city administrators—over another—teachers and principals. After analyzing the form these policies took, this article concludes that it is necessary to rethink the processes that create visibility and invisibility. Public data obscured the voices, experiences and collective traumas of students and faculty within the school. A narrow focus on activities within the schools rendered invisible the structural decisions made by the Department of Education in New York City—to favor small schools over large, comprehensive ones. In order to create understanding, and a sense of common purpose, those who are spoken for in simplified data must also be given the opportunity to debate the representations of their performance and quality. (shrink)

This book chapter is not available in ORA, but you may download, display, print and reproduce this chapter in unaltered form only for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organization from the ANU E Press website.

Silence resides in the gaps between the known islands of explicit knowledge. Rather than expecting to build systems with complete information, we take a human-centred approach. Individual citizens need to be active, engage in dialogue and be aware of the importance of tacit knowledge. As societies, we recognise the incompleteness and inconsistency of our discourse.

Toulmin (2001) sostiene que la invención de las disciplinas,un cambio iniciado en el siglo XVII, involucró factores tantointelectuales como institucionales. Intelectualmente, el uso dela geometría cartesiana como modelo de conocimiento proveyólos fundamentos; institucionalmente, la división del trabajo enprofesiones y disciplinas hizo el resto. Sin embargo, este cambiose produjo lentamente y sólo alcanzó su apogeo durante el sigloXX, con la conformación de lo que Snow (2012) reconoce comolas dos culturas: las Humanidades y las Ciencias Naturales.Focalizando esta distinción, proponemos reflexionar sobre laargumentación (...) escrita en dos disciplinas (Letras y Biología)desde la perspectiva toulminiana. Al respecto, consideramosque los argumentos y los modos de escribirlos están tanprofundamente ligados a las disciplinas que resulta esencialsaber y reconocer cómo operan estos procesos a fin de entenderla lógica de dichos campos. En efecto, las particularidades decada disciplina están siempre presentes a la hora de escribir yde argumentar por escrito. Todo texto pertenece, por lo menos,a un género y a una disciplina; como tal, emplea movimientosretóricos particulares que varían de comunidad en comunidady de un tipo de discurso a otro. Este trabajo, retoma lapropuesta de Toulmin (2003, 2001) y busca dar cuenta de lasespecificidades de la argumentación escrita en dos carrerasuniversitarias argentinas (Letras y Biología). Así, después dehaber efectuado un trabajo de campo que comprendió, duranteun semestre, observación participante de clases, entrevistasa docentes y alumnos y recolección de documentos áulicos(exámenes escritos y trabajos prácticos), distinguimos cuatrorasgos que caracterizan la argumentación en los ámbitosdisciplinares de las Humanidades y de las Ciencias Naturales:(1) los grados de formalidad; (2) los grados de precisión; (3) losmodos de resolución; y (4) las metas de la argumentación. Estoscuatro rasgos permiten complejizar los elementos estables delesquema toulminiano y pensar sus usos, sus aplicaciones y susalcances en las disciplinas. (shrink)

Ce qui semble à première vue paradoxal, « la rationalité de la performance », fait référence à une capacité extraordinaire des êtres humains, à savoir la compétence-en-performance qui leur permet d’affronter les vicissitudes de la vie et de négocier leurs buts et intérêts dans une interaction dialogique avec leurs semblables. Le concept de « rationalité de la performance » exige de passer d’une rationalité logique à une rationalité adaptative qui puisse saisir les activités changeantes et les incertitudes de la vie. (...) Accepter ce concept suppose de changer notre mode de théorisation, d’un mode classique à un mode moderne, c’est-à-dire de passer du réductionnisme au holisme. Cet article introduit le Mixed Game Model et expose les éléments fondamentaux d’une telle théorie holistique qui place les êtres humains au centre et qui décrit leurs actions et comportements à l’aide des principes des probabilités. (shrink)

In research and teaching on ethical aspects of emerging sciences and technologies, the structure of working environments, spaces and relationships play a significant role. Many of the routines and standard practices of academic life, however, do little to actively explore and experiment with these elements. They do even less to address the importance of contextual and embodied dimensions of thinking. To engage these dimensions, we have benefitted significantly from practices that take us out of seminar rooms, offices and laboratories as (...) well as beyond traditional ways of working and interacting. We have called one such practice the ‘walkshop’. Through walkshops, we have spent several days walking together with our colleagues and students in open outdoor spaces, keeping a sustained intellectual discussion on ethical aspects of science, technology and innovation while moving through these landscapes. For us, this has generated useful opportunities to escape established hierarchies, roles and patterns of thought and to rethink conceptual and philosophical issues from new perspectives, under new attitudes and with renewed energy. In this paper we wish to highlight the potential benefits of the walkshop approach by sharing some of our experiences and describing how we have prepared for and carried out these events. We share this information in the hope that we may encourage others to both experiment with the walkshop approach and exchange information on their own innovative processes for research and teaching in science and engineering ethics. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy of science regards theoretical reasoning, based on the example of Euclidian geometry, as the hallmark of a mature science. There is, however, a parallel tradition of practical reasoning based on specific cases that goes back to Aristotle. In this paper I argue that practical reasoning is an essential part of the practice of chemistry and should be understood and appreciated on its own merits rather than regarded as a symbol of the immaturity and inferiority of chemistry as a (...) science. (shrink)

Since Plato’s massive critique of the Sophists rhetoric’s ill repute runs through the history of western philosophy denunciating methods of rhetoric as in large part dishonest persuasion strategies which are at most marginally interested in dealing with truths. This judgement falls way too short insofar as it distorts the historically grown stock labeled “rhetoric” not only in the Aristotelian work. With reference to Olaf Müller’s philosophical book addressing the “controversy” between Goethe and Newton about the nature of light, I will (...) study the different rhetorical models and methods used by Newton and Goethe and also Müller himself. It becomes apparent that even works attempting to decide who was right in the long run do far more than trying to evoke true “representations” of facts or truths in the reader. The specific use of language patterns provides deeper insight into an author’s mindset towards the subject area discussed in his work and generally speaking the investigation of the rhetoric of science and philosophy leads to a better understanding of different epistemic cultures both in philosophy and science. (shrink)

Although rhetoric is not a category of ancient Indian philosophy, this paper argues that Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, 2 eighth-century Indian Buddhist philosophers, can nonetheless be seen to embrace a rhetorical conception of rationality. That is, while these thinkers are strong proponents of rational analysis and philosophical argumentation as tools for attaining certainty, they also uphold the contingent nature of all such processes. Drawing on the categories of the New Rhetoric, this paper argues that these Buddhist thinkers understand philosophical argumentation to (...) be directed at a universal audience of rational beings, where this universal audience is not an actual audience but a rhetorical one constructed through the author’s particular and historically contingent conception of what counts as rational. A reception theory of rationality is one that holds that the rationality of an argument depends upon its acceptance by a rational audience. When philosophers recognize the historically contingent nature of what counts as rational, they can embrace a reception theory of rationality that neither reduces the rational to mere opinion nor restricts it to a single, absolute, and timeless standard. (shrink)

This article surveys the output of contemporary Italian philosophers and distinguishes three principal ways of approaching their intellectual endeavor: denial, the “evil-queen syndrome,” and compliance. Philosophers in a state of denial seem unaware of the loss in status that Italian philosophy as an academic discipline suffers in international forums. The evil-queen syndrome concerns the habit of compiling surveys of past philosophies, focusing on traditions of which one considers oneself the privileged inheritor. Compliance—in its commendable aspect—refers to the growing number of (...) philosophers who participate in international debates, whose forums are for the most part Anglo-American peer-refereed journals. This article urges a less subservient intellectual attitude, capable of contributing new ideas and arguments to the international philosophical forum. (shrink)

: In his works on ecological philosophy, Bruno Latour develops an interesting ontology. He proposes a new worldview, in which religion is reinterpreted in view of a Gaian philosophy. He extends ‘pluralism’ beyond the anthropocentrism that dominates modern humanism. In his book Facing Gaia Latour includes nonhuman beings in a larger community and works towards a larger concept of eco-humanism. In this paper, I try to reconstruct his position by showing that the philosophical foundation for his interpretation of ontology is (...) to be classified as a form of new materialism. This new interpretation of materialism has postmodernist origins (inspired by Gilles Deleuze), but it is not identical to it, because Latour explicitly distances himself from ‘postmodernism’. He wants to contribute to a ‘positive’ ontology. My point is that Latour’s materialist grounding of ontology, which he tries to elaborate in order to make a religious pluralism possible, obstructs any foundation of transcendence and, finally, congests a pluralistic ecumene, because it renounces to the idea of the ‘whole’ and a unitary principle of being. His ideas on eco-humanism and pluralistic ecumene could gain momentum if we opted for a more holistic and idealistic way of thinking. In my last section I show how this is possible: objective idealism and panentheism are conceived as models that belong together and can offer a viable alternative for modern versions of materialism. (shrink)

This article applies the anthropological concept of liminality to reconceptualize palliative care ethics. Liminality possesses both spatial and temporal dimensions. Both these aspects are analyzed to provide insight into the intersubjective relationship between patient and caregiver in the context of palliative care. Aristotelian practical wisdom, or phronesis, is considered to be the appropriate model for palliative care ethics, provided it is able to account for liminality. Moreover, this article argues for the importance of liminality for providing an ethical structure that (...) grounds the doctrine of double effect and overcomes the impasse of phronesis in the treatment of the terminally ill. (shrink)

Logos, generally regarded as the basic principle of the operating world, seems to be closely tied up with development of human being. With the evolutionary history of human, logos evolves into three different dimensional expressions, namely reason, rationality, and reasonableness. In different historical periods, each expression of logos has their own glory days respectively. In the age of ancient Greek sages, reason referred to the whole range of subjects from geometry argumentation to rhetoric. Later on, there emerged a superiority on (...) theoretical abstraction and logical deduction, which was called the dictatorship of rationality. Yet it was found that the bureaucratization of learning had created as many problems as it solved. In recent decades, the years had seen a revived interest in substantial arguments in medical ethics, ecology, and other practical fields. However, we are not inclined to regard reasonableness as a way that it can cure once and for all the crisis of our times. Based on the imperfection of each variant and indeterminacy of the topic, we attempt to track back to logos in a more comprehensive perspective, corresponding to diversity of human activities and modern social production way of life. (shrink)