The article analyzes the conception of a trading zone as a space of action and belief coordination. P. Galison proposed the conception based on anthropological and linguistic analogies. The article reviews the anthropological analogies aimed at building up the conception and the legitimacy of their use. The conclusion is that the analogies used are not accurate enough. If the tribes interacting in trading zones have a common history, material culture, and practices, they can hardly have significant differences. If they are (...) not in possession of all these characteristics, they are unlikely to remind us of different groups of scientists who participate in common researches. The article also contains the hypothesis that acceptance of a common habitus is a condition subject to which the scientists can arrange the mutual understanding space. It issues new challenges to the scientific community, as all people related to university education also accept the scientists’ habitus. (shrink)

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

The topic of this paper is one more alluded to than actually studied, both in current philosophy of art and in the theory of criticism. There is a reason for this, which both clarifies the issue and suggests how it is to be approached. To suppose that the person responsible for a work of art has at least something interesting to say about it is only natural, and even commonplace. But granted this, the qualifications to be put on that assumption (...) in individual and particular cases become of much greater interest. The major question would not then be whether or not, in an absolute sense, the artist is in a position to talk definitively about his own work, but rather on what basis or criteria a claim to that effect can be made to rest, and how far it extends in its implications. (shrink)

This paper compares Wittgenstein's conception of ?objective certainty? with Descartes's ?metaphysical certainty?. According to both conceptions if you are certain of something in these senses, then it is inconceivable that you are mistaken. But a striking difference is that for Descartes, if you are metaphysically certain of something it follows both that the something is so and that you know it is so; whereas on Wittgenstein's conception neither thing follows. I try to show that there is a form of ?scepticism? (...) in Wittgenstein's outlook on the concept of certainty, although it is not the familiar Philosophical Scepticism. The Appendix takes issue with a recent essay by John Cook which argues that the ?hinge propositions? of On Certainty are based on ?the metaphysics of phenomenalism? (shrink)

This paper considers characteristic views advanced in the past fifteen years that may be considered relatively sympathetic to student practices of cheating on graded assignments or exams. We detect and analyze typical fallacies that are recurrent in articles that promote a revisionist view of cheating as morally permissible. We offer a general, deontological argument that cheating is immoral. The efforts to justify student cheating take several forms. For example, it has been argued that cheating may be tolerated if the student (...) did not intend to cheat, perhaps because of a failure to understand the normal rules or expected procedures. We also argue that student collaboration in graded work constitutes cheating even if the instructor condones such collaboration. In a similar vein, we address the view that student copying is cheating even if the instructor alters the rules to allow such copying. This moral view can be applied to any cheating behavior, we argue. As a specific example, we demonstrate how it can be applied to the pedagogical recommendation that instructors should encourage their students to cheat in order to cultivate student skills in the area of cyber security. We also address the view that student cheating can be justified by situations in which the student believes that he/she is being subjected to an unfair or unethical overall learning environment. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman, in Logic and Reasoning (Synthese 60 (1984), 107–127) describes an unsuccessful attempt ... to develop a theory which would give logic a special role in reasoning. Here reasoning is psychological, a procedure for revising one''s beliefs. In the present paper, I construe reasoning sociologically, as a process of linguistic interaction; and show how both reasoning in the psychologistic sense and logic are related to that process.

Logic is usually thought to concern itself only with features that sentences and arguments possess in virtue of their logical structures or forms. The logical form of a sentence or argument is determined by its syntactic or semantic structure and by the placement of certain expressions called “logical constants.”[1] Thus, for example, the sentences Every boy loves some girl. and Some boy loves every girl. are thought to differ in logical form, even though they share a common syntactic and semantic (...) structure, because they differ in the placement of the logical constants “every” and “some”. By contrast, the sentences Every girl loves some boy. and Every boy loves some girl. are thought to have the same logical form, because “girl” and “boy” are not logical constants. Thus, in order to settle questions about logical form, and ultimately about which arguments are logically valid and which sentences logically true, we must distinguish the “logical constants” of a language from its nonlogical expressions. (shrink)

The goal of the paper is to develop and propose a general model of the state space of AI. Given the breathtaking progress in AI research and technologies in recent years, such conceptual work is of substantial theoretical interest. The present AI hype is mainly driven by the triumph of deep learning neural networks. As the distinguishing feature of such networks is the ability to self-learn, self-learning is identified as one important dimension of the AI state space. Another dimension is (...) recognized as generalization, the possibility to go over from specific to more general types of problems. A third dimension is semantic grounding. Our overall analysis connects to a number of known foundational issues in the philosophy of mind and cognition: the blockhead objection, the Turing test, the symbol grounding problem, the Chinese room argument, and use theories of meaning. It shall finally be argued that the dimension of grounding decomposes into three sub-dimensions. And the dimension of self-learning turns out as only one of a whole range of “self-x-capacities” (based on ideas of organic computing) that span the self-x-subspace of the full AI state space. (shrink)

This paper argues for a deflationary account of trying on which ‘x tried to ϕ’ abbreviates ‘x did something with the intention of ϕ-ing’, where ‘did something’ is treated as a schematic verb. On this account, tryings are not a distinctive sort of episode present in some or all cases of acting. ‘x tried to ϕ’ simply relates some doing of x’s to a further aim x had, which may or may not have been achieved. Consequently, the analysis of ‘x (...) tried to ϕ’ adds nothing to our basic understanding of the nature of action or agency. The account handles examples of naked trying, trying without acting – for example, trying but failing to move when paralyzed – by construing ‘did something’ as a schematic verb for a broader class of purposive events than actions, subsuming inter alia the formation of intentions-in-action. It gives a technical sense to ‘doing with the intention of ϕ-ing’ so that it includes any doing that can be construed as for the purpose of executing the intention of ϕ-ing. This subsumes as a limiting case the formation of an intention-in-action to ϕ, which is for the purpose of executing that very intention. (shrink)

Some aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought are considered in the light of a remark he makes about the “apocalyptic” view of the world. The influence of Tolstoy on Wittgenstein is discussed and elaborated with reference to the idea of a “form of life” as a locus of order, and also to that of “exceptionality” in an unfolding course of events—the latter setting up a connection with the “apocalyptic” theme. This imaginative backdrop remains discernible in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which draws upon it (...) to perhaps unexpected effect in achieving a dialectical balance between the motifs of order and breakdown. (shrink)

Heidegger's treatment of 'machination' in the Beiträge zur Philosophie begins the critique of technological thinking that would centrally characterize his later work. Unlike later discussions of technology, the critique of machination in Beiträge connects its arising to the predominance of 'lived-experience' ( Erlebnis ) as the concealed basis for the possibility of a pre-delineated, rule-based metaphysical understanding of the world. In this essay I explore this connection. The unity of machination and lived-experience becomes intelligible when both are traced to their (...) common root in the primordial Greek attitude of techne , originally a basic attitude of wondering knowledge of nature. But with this common root revealed, the basic connection between machination and lived-experience also emerges as an important development of one of the deepest guiding thoughts of the Western philosophical tradition: the Parmenidean assertion of the sameness of being and thinking. In the Beiträge 's analysis of machination and lived-experience, Heidegger hopes to discover a way of thinking that avoids the Western tradition's constant basic assumption of self-identity, an assumption which culminates in the modern picture of the autonomous, self-identical subject aggressively set over against a pre-delineated world of objects in a relationship of mutual confrontation. In the final section, I investigate an important and illuminating parallel to Heidegger's result: the consideration of the relationship between experience and technological ways of thinking that forms the basis of the late Wittgenstein's famous rule-following considerations. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, Giorgio Agamben and Charles Taylor have produced important and influential genealogical works on the philosophical and political conceptions of secularity. Yet in their recent work, both of these thinkers have respectively returned to a prominent theme in their earlier works: Human life. This essay offers a parallel reading of Agamben and Taylor as post-Heideggerian critics of the modern conception of human subjectivity. Through examining these their respective characterizations of modern subjectivity — namely Taylor’s account of (...) the “disengaged self” and Agamben’s conception of the “excluded-included” bare life, this essay seeks to highlight not only the Heideggerian currents underlying the philosophical anthropologies of Agamben and Taylor, but also the ontological paradoxicalities they detect in the conception of human existence and subjectivity in politico-philosophical modernity. After reviewing the different aspects of Agamben’s and Taylor’s critiques of modern subjectivity as well as the traditional metaphysical conception of humans as “language animals”, this essay concludes by sketching a robust and affirmative “paradoxical” conception of human beings as “language animals” which simultaneously takes into account the insights from Taylor’s (post)analytic philosophical renewal of Aristotelianism and Agamben’s critical analysis of contemporary biopolitics in the continental philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Guided by an account of the norms governing justificatory conversations, I propose that person-level epistemic justification is a matter of possessing a certain ability: the ability to provide objectively good reasons for one's belief by drawing upon considerations which one responsibly and correctly takes there to be no reason to doubt. On this view, justification requires responsible belief and is also objectively truth-conducive. The foundationalist doctrine of immediately justified beliefs is rejected, but so too is the thought that coherence in (...) one's total belief system is sufficient, or indeed necessary, for justification. The problem of the regress is solved by exploiting the 'localist' idea that in order to possess the ability to justify any given belief, one only needs to be in a position to draw upon appropriate justified background beliefs to provide good reasons for holding the belief; one needn't be able to defend the relevant background beliefs, and so on, all at one sitting. (shrink)

We all know that we have and are our bodies. But might it be possible to leave this common place? In the present article we try to do this by attending to the way we do our bodies. The site where we look for such action is that of handling the hypoglycaemias that sometimes happen to people with diabetes. In this site it appears that the body, active in measuring, feeling and countering hypoglycaemias is not a bounded whole: its boundaries (...) leak. Bits and pieces of the outside get incorporated within the active body; while the centre of some bodily activities is beyond the skin. The body thus enacted is not self-evidently coherent either. There are tensions between the body’s organs; between the control under which we put our bodies and the erratic character of their behaviour; and between the various needs and desires single bodies somehow try to combine. Thus to say that a body is a whole, or so we conclude, skips over a lot of work. One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do. The person who fails to do so dies. (shrink)

Throughout history, philosophers have reflected on educational questions. Some of their ideas emerged in defense of, or opposition to, skepticism about the possibility of formal teaching and learning. These philosophers include Plato, Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Together, they comprise a tradition that establishes the impossibility of instruction and the imperative to undertake it. The value of this tradition for contemporary education is that it redirects attention away from performance assessments and learning outcomes to (...) the ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical dimensions of schooling. I argue that philosophers of education are uniquely responsible for teaching this tradition so that instruction might be undertaken in the right spirit. To this end, my essay is divided into three parts. In the first part, I explain why instructional skepticism has not been prominent in philosophy of education. I follow up, in the second part, by clarifying my choice of the term ‘instruction.’ In the third part, I sketch the instructional philosophies that ‘book-end’ this tradition: those of Plato and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to display an alternative to the familiar decompositional approach in action theory, one that resists the demand for an explanation of action in non-agential terms, while not simply treating the notion of intentional agency as an unexplained primitive. On this Anscombean alternative, action is not a worldly event with certain psychological causes, but a distinctive form of material process, one that is not simply caused by an exercise of reason but is itself a productive (...) exercise of reason. I argue that to comprehend the proposed alternative requires an account of the temporality of events in general. An event does not simply have a position in time, but is itself temporally structured. With the inner temporality of events in view, the Anscombean conception of action as a specifically self-conscious form of temporal unity is made available for critical reflection. (shrink)

This contribution explores correctives to several errors that Thomas Nagel seems to presuppose in his seminal defence of scepticism about global justice. I rely on lessons learned and conventions surviving in West African contemporary social and moral contexts, where people engage as a matter of course in divergent, historically antagonistic cultural and political traditions. On this view, global justice is a work in progress—not a fixed univocal formula but an on-going collaborative effort, a project in perpetual renovation and inter-cultural reconsideration (...) by successive generations which presupposes a diversity of values and ways of sanctifying human life. I consider ways in which an ethics of care, as suggested by Virginia Held, might have been anticipated by the time-honoured norms of governance and political culture surviving in complex African polities, cultures which have withstood the corrosion of external colonialism since early modernity. How might iconically African, universally fundamental moral notions of decency and fairness find their way back into the global marketplace of diplomatic discourse and economic policy design?To demonstrate the need to navigate towards some consensus within the diversity of indigenous concepts associated with justice and good governance in Africa, I discuss the fiasco displayed in a widely celebrated proposal for exercising globally principles of justice in the Western liberal political tradition applied to remedy Africans’ notorious resource curse. (shrink)

I discuss Ricoeur's intriguing account of the phenomenology of the will, which focuses on deciding rather than desiring as the experientially paradigmatic exercise of the will.

Perspectives on Context and Contextualism.

In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens's proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme's principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accommodate a reliabilism which (...) has been freed from its inessential ties to naturalism. Unlike naturalistic epistemologists, the Strong Programme's sociologistic reliabilist insists that all scientific facts are the product of both natural and social causal phenomena. Anticipating objections, I draw on Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations to explain how the sociologistic reliabilist can account for standard intuitions about the objective elements of knowledge. I also explain how the Strong Programme theorist can distinguish between a belief's seeming reliable and its being reliable. (shrink)

One might imagine that this remark of James was too obvious to be denied, but in fact current philosophical orthodoxy runs against it. Since the renewal of interest in the emotions produced by Anthony Kenny's Action Emotion and Will in 1963, philosophers have focussed primarily on the cognitive aspects of emotions—the judgments, evaluations, beliefs, presuppositions which they contain. Bodily feelings have been, on the whole, slighted. Sometimes they are dismissed outright, as by Robert Solomon: “feelings no more constitute or define (...) the emotion than an army of fleas constitutes a homeless dog. … Feeling is the ornamentation of emotion, not its essence.”; more often, as in Jerome Neu, given only rather slight attention because “thoughts are of greater importance than feelings in the classification and discrimination of emotional states”. (shrink)

Despite its ground-breaking character, Castoriadis’s theory of society remains, in some respects, caught up in conceptual difficulties common to social theory generally, particularly the problem of conceptualizing social unity without resort to an understanding of society that downplays heterogeneity and over-emphasizes the homogeneous. Unlike many other theoretical approaches and traditions, Castoriadis’s work also offers a possible path out of this dilemma in the form of philosophical innovations which could enable us to conceptualize social unity without flattening the heterogeneous characteristics of (...) the social. Castoriadis sometimes fails to recognize the full implications of his own rejection of ontological determinism, and so ends up proposing a far too deterministic and homogeneous model of social types. This essay aims to show how this might be remedied by drawing on Castoriadis’s own fundamental insights. (shrink)

Plato’s simile of the cave has for over two millennia been the model for a particular understanding of the limitated nature of human knowledge. Castoriadis’s understanding of human knowledge differs from Plato’s in that the artificiality of knowledge, and by extension of culture and society in general, is seen not as a barrier to true knowledge but as a necessary precondition for any knowledge whatsoever. Plato dreams of leaving the cave and encountering the world in the clear light of day; (...) Castoriadis contends that the labyrinth of human creation is our only means of encountering the real. Plato tries to use philosophy to design a way out of the traps humans find themselves in, traps they build for themselves. Castoriadis seeks no such escape and believes that to make such an ultimate escape the business of philosophy or politics is misguided, if not dangerous. (shrink)

It is argued in this article that the concept of practice is one of the key concepts in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. It partly replaces his earlier talk about the inexpressible. ?The practice has to speak for itself, as Wittgenstein succinctly puts it. The concept of practice not only points to the ways in which the unity of our concepts are underpinned, as Gordon Baker has it, it also comprises the skills involved in handling the conceptualized phenomena, our prereflective familiarity with (...) them, expressed in the sureness in our behaviour towards them, and the judgmental power exercised in applying or withholding a given concept on a particular occasion. These factors are all relevant to the establishment of knowledge, but they cannot themselves be fully and straightforwardly articulated by verbal means. Nevertheless, they represent what we go by when we apply concepts and other types of rules. To follow a rule is what Wittgenstein calls a practice. The sketched analysis of this concept makes us understand better how it is possible to apply a rule without the support of another rule. It also makes us realize in what sense one is justified in talking about tacit knowledge in connection with the application of concepts and rule?following in general. Quite a lot hangs on seeing the world aright at this point. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper explicates a Constructivist Epistemology which underlies cybernetic models of perceiving and knowing. We focus on the recent work of W. T. Powers . Powers' model consists of hierarchially arranged negative feedback systems, is based on the claim that living organisms behave to control perceptions, and thus suggests that organisms construct their experiential world. We argue that this provides a basis for a modified scientific scepticism, a scepticism with a positive dimension gained by adding the notion of cognitive construction. (...) From this perspective, knowing and perceiving pertain to the construction of invariances in the living organism's experience.RésuméDans cet essai, nous exposons une épistémologie constructivistc qui sert de base pour des modèles cybernétiques de la perception et de la connaissancc. Nous nous référonts à l'œuvre de W. T. Powers qui a propose un modèle constitué par un arrangement hiérarchique de boucles rétroactives en partant de l'idée que tout comportement a pour but de contrôler les perceptions. Ce modèle suggère que le monde expérientiel est le produit d'une activité constructive. Nous défendons la thèse que cette orientation peut fournir le fondement d'un scepticisme scientifique qui acquiert un aspect positif par la notion de construction cognitive. De ce point de vue, connaissance et perception sont des activités qui construisent des invariances dans l'expérience d'un organisme.ZusammenfassungIn der vorliegenden Arbeit wird eine konstruktivistische Erkenntnistheorie entwickelt, die ihrerseits gewissen kybernetischen Modeller) der Wahrnehmurtg und Er‐kenntnis zugrundeliegt. Wir beziehen uns auf die Untersuchungen von W. T. Powers , dessen Modell aus hierarchisch angeordneten Rückkopplungssystemen besteht und auf der Annahme be‐ruht, dass das Verhalten von Lebewesen der Regelung von Wahrnehmungcn dicnt. Powers legt deshalb die Hypothese nahe, dass Organismen ihre Erlebenswelt konstru‐iren. Wir vertreten die Ansicht, dass diese die Grundlage für einen neuen wisscnschaftli‐chen Skeptizismus liefert, der auf Grund des Begriffes der kognitiven Konstruktion eine positive Dimension gewinnt. Von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus betrachtet betreffen Wissen und Wahrnehmung den aktiven Aufbau von Konstanten in der Erlebenswelt des Orga‐nismus. (shrink)

This essay explores how moral discourse can have dogmatic tendencies. In exemplifying how it is possible to move beyond such tendencies, this essay turns to the Norwegian picture book Garmann's Summer. The essay not only suggests a vision of moral thinking, but also aims to demonstrate the role that literature, and particularly children's literature, can play in moral discourse, particularly in philosophy. The picture book's elaborations on the difficulties children can face when starting school show both what ethics beyond moral (...) concepts can be and the role that literature and art can have in moral thinking. The essay aims to show that moral work may consist in acknowledging difficulties and that all of their complexities have a role to play in the lives of real human beings. Accordingly, the essay is not a philosophical interpretation of a children's book, but an attempt to read a children's book to do philosophy. (shrink)

Richard Gale, in On the Nature and Existence of God, offers several reasons why an “historical-cum-indexical” theory of reference cannot be appropriate in explaining how people refer to God. The present paper identifies five distinct lines of argument in Gale, attempts to clarify several important desiderata for a successful theory of reference, and argues that Gale fails to discharge the burden of proof he has assumed, leaving the most important features of Alston’s “direct reference” theory untouched. Nevertheless, it is conceded (...) that some consequences of Alston’s theory are quite counter-intuitive. The paper therefore concludes with a consideration of two alternatives: either taking a hard, Alstonian line in conflict with people’s linguistic intuitions, or striking a compromise with descriptivism along lines similar to those found in Gareth Evans’s paper, “The Causal Theory of Names.”. (shrink)

This article outlines the main tenets of affect theory and links these to Sloterdijk’s spherology. Where affect foregrounds prepersonal energies and posthuman impulses, spherology provides a lens for considering how humans congregate in constantly reconfiguring socialities in their pursuit of legitimacy and immunity. The article then explores the relevance of “affective spheres” for contemporary social science research. The article’s main argument here is that research of contemporary organisational and professional practices must increasingly be spherogenic, or seeking to build “affective spheres.” (...) The basis of this argument are the in situ complexity and fast-changing nature of practices, and the increasing challenges involved in objectifying or ‘freezing’, and analysing or dissecting such practices. The article draws for its case study on a video-reflexive project conducted in a U.S. health service. The article concludes that the notion of research as spherogenics counterbalances the conventional methodological emphasis on a predetermined stance —whether neutral or political—in our construction and enactment of social science research. (shrink)

An infuential twenty-first century philosophical project posits a central role for knowledge: knowledge is more fundamental than epistemic states like belief and justification. So-called “knowledge first” theorists find support for this thought in identifying central theoretical roles for knowledge. I argue that a similar methodology supports a privileged role for more specific category of basic knowledge. Some of the roles that knowledge first theorists have posited for knowledge generally are better suited for basic knowledge.

Readers beware! This book is other than it first seems. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s latest philosophical offering is unlike anything that we have had from him to date. Its preface warns that the Tractatus is no textbook. This is an extreme understatement; really it is a deep puzzle—one that must be handled with great care. As the first lines signal there has been a radical change in the author’s characteristic style. Gone are the ingenious, probing explorations of topics undertaken in his highly (...) fragmentary writings that have been Wittgenstein’s trademark to date. In his new book Wittgenstein abandons the interrogative that his signature vision of and approach to philosophy found in his many masterpieces—The Blue and Brown Books, The Philosophical Investigations, and On Certainty. His previous masterworks have prosecuted a continuous philosophical enterprise designed to expose, resist and reject certain deeply compelling pictures that attract, mesmerize and blind us when it comes to thinking .. (shrink)

This paper compares the treatment of private sensations in the works of Wittgenstein and Klossowski. Its aim is to show that, despite the differences between their traditions and methods, they align in at least one important respect: rejecting relations of reference between signs and private sensations. The paper briefly contextualises their lines of attack on these relations, situating the two thinkers’ commonalities amidst what are undeniably divergent wider purposes. It proceeds to argue for two more specific conclusions. Firstly, Klossowski’s own (...) rejoinder directed at reference to private sensations is rooted in his comparison of linguistic meaning to economic valuation in Living Currency. Secondly, Klossowski goes beyond Wittgenstein in arguing that, regardless of the status of reference of this sort, no complete account of sensation can view it only as private. (shrink)

Artworks at Lascaux and other late Palaeolithic caves integrate geological features or “relief” of the cave wall in a way that suggests a symbiotic relation between nature and culture. I argue this qualifies as “receptivity to a situation,” which is neither fully active nor merely passive and emerges as a necessary element of the intentions made apparent by such cave art. I argue against prominent interpretations of cave art, including the shamanist account and propose a structural interpretation attentive to particular (...) cases. Seen in this way, cave art displays intentions that are analyzable as having a tripartite structure: mentally directed, embedded in actions and receptive to a situation. Moreover, the latter is the medium through which the other two elements are conjoined. Drawing on a range of archaeological and philosophical resources from both analytical philosophy and phenomenology, I argue that what I call cave art’s “intentional story” is important for the philosophy of intentions more generally. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the structure of interpersonal emotional relations. I argue that current cognitive-developmental theory has overestimated the role of conceptual thinking, and underestimated the role of intrinsic social-emotional organization, in the early development of such feelings as jealousy, shame, and concern. I suggest that human forms of social experience are shaped by a process through which one individual identifies with the bodily expressed attitudes of other people, and stress the diversity of self–other relational states. I draw on (...) studies in developmental psychopathology, and specifically research in autism and borderline personality disorder, to illustrate some implications of this viewpoint. (shrink)

This paper discusses a novel kind of argument for assessing the moral significance of acts of lying and misleading. It is based on considerations about valuable social norms that might be eroded by these actions, because these actions function as signals. Given that social norms can play an important role in supporting morality, individuals have a responsibility to preserve such norms and to prevent ‘cultural slopes’ that erode them. Depending on whether there are norms against lying, misleading, or both, and (...) how likely it is that they might be eroded, these actions can thus have different moral significance. In cases in which the rule ‘do not lie’, as a relatively simple rule, functions as a ‘focal point’, acts of misleading are often morally preferable. In other words, in such cases the possibility of ‘cultural slopes’ can ground a context-dependent slippery slope argument for a moral difference between lying and misleading. (shrink)

Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious epistemologies. (...) In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argument by exploring St Augustine’s response to Meno’s Paradox, and his radical claim that only Christ can be called ‘teacher’. Though ancient, this view of the relationship of the teacher and student to knowledge may seem surprisingly contemporary because of its emphasis on the independence of the learner. Although our argument is grounded in classic texts of the Western tradition, we suggest that arguments could be made by drawing on similar resources in other religious traditions, such as Islam, that also draw upon the Platonic tradition and similarly emphasise the importance of communal and personal acts of worship. (shrink)

Anscombe raises a difficulty for the very idea of quotation. Davidson seeks to dissolve this difficulty. But the difficulty is real. And its lesson is that, in quotation, language takes itself as its topic in a non-objectifying manner. The idea of a non-objectifying manner of being a topic is crucial, not merely for understanding quotation, but for understanding the distinctive form of sensory consciousness in which language is perceived.

This article explains Wittgenstein's distinction between good, bad, and vacuous modern music which he introduced in a diary entry from January 27, 1931. I situate Wittgenstein's discussion in the context of Oswald Spengler's ideas concerning the decline of Western culture, which informed Wittgenstein's philosophical progress during his middle period, and I argue that the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, and Wittgenstein's critique thereof, served as an immediate link between Spengler's cultural pessimism and Wittgenstein's threefold distinction. I conclude that Wittgenstein's distinction (...) between bad and vacuous modern music is analogous to Schenker's distinction between the compositional fallacies of the progressive and the reactionary composers of his time. Concomitantly, Wittgenstein's philosophically problematic notion of good modern music transcended the conceptual framework of both Schenker and Spengler. In this context, I examine Wittgenstein's remarks on Gustav Mahler as well as his remark on the music of the future as monophony, which, I conclude, should be understood ultimately as an ellipsis of his much later view of musical meaning and intelligibility. (shrink)

Although social scientists have been devoted to discovering specific realities of social life, many theorists devoted to critical judgment have turned to philosophy in search of universal grounds of truth and reality. They have, however, worried about the problem of relativism. Although Wittgenstein has often been characterized as a relativist, Cora Diamond, inspired by G. E. M Anscombe, argues that his work, despite internal tensions, provides rational grounds for external criticism of social practices. Her argument and her critique of the (...) work of Peter Winch and Ilham Dilman are, however, neither adequately supported by Wittgenstein’s texts nor sufficiently developed on their own terms. (shrink)