In this paper an attempt is made to draw out an outline of present social evils generated from Caste-Discrimination and this system is the misinterpreted conception of Varynavyavastha where the four varnas are divided on the basis of division of labour and since history it converted to caste system. With these Human Rights issues are directly related and human rights are an important concept in civilized and democratic society. But from the part of Government and judiciary the above said both (...) are separated and cannot be treated equally and it can be see in the latest examples of inhuman acts with Dalits in Haryana. First this paper also highlights the schemes and policies of the government to eliminate this system and their failure in part of unavailability to socially deprived persons. These policies are only in the paper form and cannot become part of practical concerns. Secondly these problems related to caste- discrimination can be solved only by social awareness and social interaction among different communities but not only by policies and schemes. Since independence there is not a single case of social awareness programme conducted by political parties and government and this become the root cause of social inequality till now. The present examples of violation and injustice with poor and deprived persons show the failure of our judiciary system and so-called democratic & secular society. With this background some recommendations will be discussed in the last of the paper so that a humane society can be modeled according to our constitutional commitment of social equality, freedom and brotherhood. (shrink)

The continuous demand for Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens led to this revised edition which analyses the recent socio-economic and political changes that have taken place. Caste-based marriage and control over women's sexuality have been crucial for the continuation of the caste system in India. Thus, caste and gender are linked. Brutal reprisals have followed when dalits and women have tried to challenge caste-based marriage and inequality which allots strict rules of conduct for women and all dalits. Maithreyi Krishnaraj, (...) the Series Editor, highlights the author’s discussion on the new ways in which caste violence targets women and on the changes within the family—immediate and extended—that still keep women subservient to caste norms. She points to the new discussion on an economy in transition to capitalism, and persistent conflicts over religion, language, ethnicity and other differences that relate to gender. The book also includes a new ‘Afterword: Caste and Gender in the New Millennium’, which provides an updated discussion on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act 1989. Erudite, yet accessible, this book enables the reader to understand the ramifications of caste today. (shrink)

While the Enlightenment promoted thinking for oneself independent of religious authority, the ‘Endarkenment’ (Millgram 2015) concerns deference to a new authority: the specialist, a hyperspecializer. Non-specialists need to defer to such authorities as they are unable to understand their reasoning. Millgram describes how humans are capable of being serial hyperspecializers, able to move from one specialism to another. We support the basic thrust of Millgram’s position, and seek to articulate how the core idea is deployed in very different ways in (...) relation to extremely different philosophical areas. We attend to the issue of the degree of isolation of different specialists and we urge greater emphasis on parallel hyperspecialization, which describes how different specialisms can be embodied in one person at one time. (shrink)

Dalit literature articulates the oppressions and exploitations faced by Dalits in a caste ridden society. Dalit writing as a political form of writing records the cultural and social lives of Dalits and ideologically the writing offers a call for resistance. Bama is a Tamil Christian Dalit writer who writes about the lives of Dalit Women in Tamil Nadu. This paper attempts a look at Bama’s novel Sangathi as a site representing Dalit women and analyses how caste and gender act as (...) tools of double oppression in their life. This critical feminist reading of the novel from a Dalit Feminist perspective focuses on how women are discriminated in the Paraiya community in their relations with different social institutions like education, marriages, electoral politics etc. Simultaneously, we see how this text through its form and theme builds up a resistance against the oppressions the women face in their everyday lives. (shrink)

In this chapter, first we will provide a brief discussion of part of the larger debates concerning metaphysics and attempt to place Masham alongside her friend John Locke in holding that the subject matter of metaphysics is usually either strictly the providence of revelation or is beyond human understanding. Next, we will explore Masham’s criticisms of Norris, Malebranche, and Leibniz to see how these views inform her objections. Here, it will become clear that Masham eschews metaphysics as an a priori (...) investigation into supernatural causes and spirits. She argues that not only do we lack positive evidence for the truth of these metaphysical hypotheses, but we have good reason – from experience and revelation – to believe them false. Finally, we will turn briefly to some of Masham’s positive views concerning the existence and nature of God, the nature of substances, and human freedom. Here, we will see that while Masham does not approve of metaphysical theses that seemingly conflict with our experience of the world, we can know some things about the nature of God and ourselves through experience and reason. This leaves room for Masham to engage in a fair amount of what we would currently consider metaphysical discourse. (shrink)

We show that cast shadows can have a significant influence on the speed of visual search. In particular, we find that search based on the shape of a region is affected when the region is darker than the background and corresponds to a shadow formed by lighting from above. Results support the proposal that an early-level system rapidly identifies regions as shadows and then discounts them, making their shapes more difficult to access. Several constraints used by this system are mapped (...) out, including constraints on the luminance and texture of the shadow region, and on the nature of the item casting the shadow. Among other things, this system is found to distinguish between line elements (items containing only edges) and surface elements (items containing visible surfaces), with only the latter deemed capable of casting a shadow. (shrink)

The story of incarceration of some members of the society is a topical and current issue that requires urgent attention. The culture of some societies of the world, and in particular the Yala communities of Cross River State of Nigeria, seems to ignore the essence of human equality and dignity. The aim of this article is the documentation of stratification of the Caste practices among the three Yala communities in Cross River State. From this article, it is obvious that for (...) any society to be peaceful, progressive and to realize its full developmental capabilities and potentials, all forms of discriminatory practices must not exist. Nevertheless, where this is an acceptable socio-cultural practice of a people and in the light of present day realities of religious pluralism and globalization, the time has come that the Yala people should not preserve that aspect of culture which hinders its progress. (shrink)

This paper concerns the conditions under which realism is an artistic merit in perceptual narratives, and its consequences for the practice of non-traditional casting. Perceptual narratives are narrative representations that perceptually represent at least some of their contents, and include works of film, television, theatre and opera. On certain construals of the conditions under which realism is an artistic merit in such works, non-traditional casting, however morally merited, is often artistically flawed. I defend an alternative view of the conditions under (...) which realism is an artistic merit in perceptual narratives. I identify the two forms of realism at issue in debates about the artistic merits of non-traditional casting, and identify the artistic norms that determine the conditions under which each constitutes an artistic merit. I argue that, independently of the relation between moral merits and artistic merits, non-traditional casting violates these norms less often than is sometimes assumed. Moreover, in certain circumstances, non-traditional casting affects realism in artistically meritorious ways. I conclude by considering the implications of my view for the practice of whitewashing. (shrink)

The paper presents an ethnographic approach to the study of culture change, here the culture of the practice of Afiye (Caste system) among the Yala communities of Cross River State and why the persistence of such culture by a homogenous community such as the Yala community? The paper further, wonders why after the high status achieved by the Yala people in every facet of life and indeed the influence of factors of change, such as Christianity, globalization, technology and modernity, that (...) the Afiye practice still remained unchanged. It is the discovery of this paper that the factors responsible for the persistence of this practice against all factors of change are anchored on the religious factor, cultural identity, socio-political factors and, economic factors. It is the argument of this paper that instead of the factors above contributing to its persistence, it should be the ready factors to its discontinuity. For the advantages outweigh any given disadvantages. It is therefore the conclusion of this paper that the persistence of this practice be used to abrogate the practice which will in turn leads to an egalitarian Yala society, built on trust, unity and a mutual acceptance of one another, as a people, who indeed appreciate and love themselves as exemplified in their greetings. (shrink)

The practice of Afiye (Caste System) among the Yala communities of Cross River State of Nigeria, settled in Yala Ogoja, Yala Obubra, and Yala Ikom, is an age long practice, which no one today can precisely point to its exact origin. The practice of Afiye and the Ayiwoole (slaves and freeborn), without considering the grave consequences, here analysed as implication of the system. The implication involves the political implication which tends to hinder the political rights of members of this caste, (...) through its social structure. There is also the implication on Human Right, whereby members of this caste are denied freedom of association and movement. There is also social discrimination, which has equally affected their social standing in their different communities, such that they cannot be Ochuole (Traditional Rulers) or be allowed to participate in traditional burial rites of the traditional ruler that is regarded as the father of all. The economic factor is not left out as dispute bothering on land matters are usually and often settled in the palace and since they are the unwelcome species of human beings in the palace, there are left with no other opportunity than to be disempowered. Of course, there is the strained relationship and conflicts between the Ayiwoole and the Afiye, what Ralph Darendorf called the dialectical conflict theory. This has led to under development, Anger, bitterness and uncooperative attitude and indeed suspicion and all manners of negative tendencies among the Yala communities. It is the submission of this paper therefore, that the practice of this caste with its antecedent implications be put to a stop in order to bring about a meaningful development to Yala land. (shrink)

This paper examines the complexity of the interconnection of varna and caste systems in Indian society. It reflects the complexities of the traditions of different caste groups and the system that regulates their relationship with each other. It will also reflect on the modes where they turn slightly flexible and become harshly rigid. The concept of community no longer exists. However, it is a stronger claim but is made while stressing the importance of the social Purushārtha Sādhana. Both terms (caste (...) and varna) are used interchangeably. However, a question regarding their meaning would need an entire book to be written. Both words are too ambiguous, especially for non-Indians or non-Hindus, though everyone, including Hindus and Indians, may find it challenging to distinguish between them. (shrink)

Hierarchy and inequality are deeply rooted in Indian tradition. They are found in practice in the form of unequal placement of caste and class groups in the civilizing system of Indian society. The notions of dharma (normative order), karma (personnel moral commitment) and jāti (caste) that constitute the basic principles of Indian culture, making the Indian cultural tradition a unique cultural tradition, are also the principles of hierarchy and social stratification. In this paper, an attempt has been made to present (...) a comprehensive and investigative view of different scholars concerning the deep-rooted traditional characteristics of caste in Indian society. (shrink)

The presence of hierarchy and inequality within Indian tradition is a prominent aspect that manifests through the unequal positioning of caste and class groups within the societal framework. This intricate connection is observed in the way dharma (normative order), karma (personal moral commitment), and jāti (caste) - the foundational tenets of Indian culture - simultaneously shape the distinctiveness of Indian cultural heritage and lay the groundwork for social hierarchy. This research paper delves into an extensive and exploratory assessment of diverse (...) scholarly perspectives aimed at illuminating the deeply entrenched traditional facets of caste within Indian society. (shrink)

This paper will attempt a Hegelian reading of Derrida’s Beast and the Sovereign Vol 1 lectures to unpack certain apories and paradoxes in Ambedkar’s brief 1932 statement on modern India’s founding figure, Gandhi. In that small text Ambedkar is critical of Gandhi’s seemingly saintly attempt at fasting himself to death. Ambedkar diagnoses that Gandhi’s act of self-sacrifice conceals a type of subtle coercion of certain political decisions during India’s independent movement from British colonialism. In order to unpack philosophical assumptions in (...) Ambedkar’s statement, this paper examines Derrida’s startlingly original insights into animality, law, and sovereignty in confronting two of the Western tradition’s giants in political philosophy, namely Hobbes and Schmitt. My intuition is that Derridean deconstruction can be expanded further by deploying certain Hegelian resources. My ultimate aim is to show how Western notions of man, soul, God, the sovereign, and the state begin to dissolve when examining the Hindu metaphysical cosmology of the caste system. My thesis and concluding reflections argue that only by destroying that cosmological system of politico-metaphysical inequality can a true democratic notion of the sovereign state emerge in the Indian context. (shrink)

The following Introduction briefly traces, albeit in jarring cuts, the evolution of caste question and its relationship with Indian cinema. It also tries to point out some aspects of Indian film theory, its lacunae and hopes that some of the questions raised here may give rise to future works by other (better) theorists. Pre-Independence cinema in India rarely addressed caste question, and if it did, then it was through an abstract global humanist lens. This tendency to address caste through a (...) hollow and empty shell of a theoretical model unfortunately has stuck around even in these times, and only found newer ways to reinvent itself in Neoliberal times. To understand the reason of Indian cinema’s lack of addressing caste more directly and pointedly, it has to be seen as part of a historical process. Only then can we see the history of ideology that is “outside of itself”, that is, in the material conditions that made possible Indian caste-society as well as its cine-culture. It also tries to raise questions about the film form, and its many possibilities of experimentation with the caste question (i.e. both in ideological and experiential possibilities). Lastly, it introduces some of the key works in this issue. Of course, with the hope that the readers will forgive and give respite to the many lacuna of the issue, as well as the Editor himself. (shrink)

The political, economic and environmental policies of a hegemonic, oligarchic, political-economic international caste are the origin and cause of the ecological and political dystopia that we are living in. An utilitarian, resourcist, anthropocentric perspective guides classical economics and sustainable development models, allowing the enrichment of a tiny part of the world's population, while not impeding but, on the contrary, directly inducing economic losses and environmental destruction for the many. To preserve the integrity of natural systems we must abandon the resourcist (...) anthropocentric ethical fiction that is the current moral foundation underlying our relationship with nature and instead promote the realization of a new developmental landmark for democratic institutions: direct democracy, i.e. democracy truly governed by the people for the people, and ultimately for nature as well. (shrink)

For a Dalit,especially from a rural background, it is not easy to survive in the higher education system in India because it is overwhelmingly dominated by the upper caste, class, and English-speaking people. It is not uncommon for Dalit learners like us to face multiple discrimination, and even exclusion in higher educational institutions. Intersectionality between these three factors abounds in institutions of higher learning. The transition from native language to English has not been an easy task for me, for in (...) my educational journey, I have discovered that English is not just a language but also a commodity. It is becoming increasingly easy for economically well-off people to acquire education in English and dominate the spheres of educational institutions in India. They are usually considered as knowledgeable and intellectual persons. On the other hand, Dalit students also want to take education in English but, most of them are not able to do so because of their caste background and rampant discrimination. This study is based on my own experience and fieldwork at the University of Delhi through a semi-structured questionnaire. (shrink)

What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw (...) that will concern me in this paper is that the story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his proper role. (shrink)

In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. The second is the view that epistemic (...) rationality requires us to update our credences by conditionalization. These two theses, given some plausible assumptions, make room for rationally biased inquiries where VOI fails. I go on to argue that this is bad news for defenders of VOI. (shrink)

Caste : Groupe qui se distingue par ses privilèges et son esprit d’exclusive à l’égard de toute personne qui n’appartient pas au groupe. Larousse -/- La hausse des prix des carburants proposée pour lutter contre le changement climatique et mettre en œuvre les principes de la « transition écologique » adoptés par la France lors de la COP21, a fait naître le mouvement des gilets jaunes. Plus globalement c’est une bonne partie des français qui se trouve concernée, celle qui vit (...) dans des zones excentrées et qui ne bénéficie pas d'un réseau de transports très efficient tel celui qui émaille par exemple le territoire parisien. Ainsi, augmenter les prix des carburants, en particulier le diesel, a été perçu comme un contresens économique anti-populaire. Pendant des en, les producteurs d’automobiles, avec le support des politiques publiques, ont présenté le diesel comme le carburant le moins polluant. Mais aujourd’hui devenu le carburant « satanique », les consommateurs qui l’ont choisi, en toute bonne conscience, se sentent manipulés. La reconversion vers l’achat d’une voiture électrique est hors de la portée de la plupart de ceux qui aujourd’hui manifestent. Les aides du gouvernement ne changent pas cette réalité socioéconomique. Sous quel angle, les média ont-ils restitué le mouvement des gilets jaunes ? Alors qu’on voit émerger au sein de ce mouvement des revendications pour plus de justice sociale, qu’en est-il de la justice environnementale ? Peut-on dire qu’il s’agit d’une révolte sociale anti-écologique ? Ou autrement dit, les gilets jaunes sont-ils un mouvement anti-écologique ? (shrink)

Casting directors are tasked with selecting a suitable actor for a given role. “Suitable” in this context typically means possessing a combination of physical attributes and acting skills. But are there any moral constraints on the choice? I argue that there are. This is an uncommon supposition, and few even entertain the question. In this essay, I discuss the reasons for this omission and attempt to make up for it.

Recent political developments cast doubt on the wisdom of democratic decision-making. Brexit, the Colombian people's (initial) rejection of peace with the FARC, and the election of Donald Trump suggest that the time is right to explore alternatives to democracy. In this essay, I describe and defend the epistocratic system of government which is, given current theoretical and empirical knowledge, most likely to produce optimal political outcomes—or at least better outcomes than democracy produces. To wit, we should expand the suffrage as (...) wide as possible and weight citizens’ votes in accordance with their competence. As it turns out, the optimal system is closely related to J. S. Mill's plural voting proposal. I also explain how voters’ competences can be precisely determined, without reference to an objective standard of correctness and without generating invidious comparisons between voters. (shrink)

Justice Across Ages offers an attractive account of justice between the young and the old that brings together three notable principles of age-group justice: complete-lives equality, relational equality, and prudence. Yet, the book says little about the fact that many of us live longer than others, and the little it does say casts doubt on whether lifespan inequality threatens justice as construed by the three principles. This essay argues, instead, that theories of justice between the young and the old (...) should not dispense with a conception of justice between different longevity groups. It concludes that we must be sensitive to lifespan variations when designing policies to promote justice across age groups. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

This essay is an accessible introduction to the proof paradox in legal epistemology. -/- In 1902 the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine filed an influential legal verdict. The judge claimed that in order to find a defendant culpable, the plaintiff “must adduce evidence other than a majority of chances”. The judge thereby claimed that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal proof. -/- In this essay I first motivate the claim that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal (...) proof. I then introduce and motivate a knowledge-centred explanation of this fact. The knowledge-centred explanation rests on two premises. The first is that legal proof requires knowledge of culpability. The second is that one cannot attain knowledge that p from bare statistical evidence that p. To motivate the second premise, I suggest that beliefs based on bare statistical evidence fail to be safe—they could easily be wrong—and bare statistical evidence cannot eliminate relevant alternatives. -/- I then cast doubt on the first premise; I argue that legal proof does not require knowledge. I thereby dispute the knowledge-centred explanation of the inadequacy of bare statistical evidence for legal proof. Instead of appealing to the nature of knowledge, I suggest we should seek a more direct explanation by appealing to those more foundational epistemic properties, such as safety or eliminating relevant alternatives. (shrink)

Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the principle should be adopted. Also, we show that there are some more principled worries (...) regarding Marway's idea of a strong pro tanto duty not to complete injustices through one's procreative choices. Nonetheless, we believe Marway's arguments point in the right general direction regarding duties and structural injustice. Thus, in the final part, we suggest a positive proposal on how it would be possible to respond to the cases we raise. More specifically, we explore the suggestion that agents have a pro tanto duty to participate in eliminating structural injustice. Importantly, this duty can be satisfied, not only in procreation choices but in multiple ways. (shrink)

This paper aims to cast doubt upon a certain way of analysing prudential value (or good for ), namely in the manner of a ‘buck-passing’ analysis. It begins by explaining why we should be interested in analyses of good for and the nature of buck-passing analyses generally (§I). It moves on to considering and rejecting two sets of buck-passing analyses. The first are analyses that are likely to be suggested by those attracted to the idea of analysing good for in (...) a buck-passing fashion (§II). The second are the buck-passing analyses of good for proposed by John Skorupski (§III), Henry Sidgwick (§IV), and Stephen Darwall (§V). Along the way the paper shows that Michael Smith’s and Peter Railton’s analyses of other concepts—analyses that could be (and have been) taken to be analyses of good for —are similarly unsuitable as analyses of it. The paper concludes by suggesting that the fact that none of the buck-passing accounts of good for considered here is satisfactory, coupled with an appreciation of the various problems that a buck-passing analysis of good for would have to avoid, suggests that we should be sceptical about the prospects of finding such an analysis and should look for one of a different type. (shrink)

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

Freedom is sometimes cast as the psychological ideal that distinguishes human beings from other animals; sometimes as the ethical ideal that distinguishes some human beings from others; and sometimes as the political ideal that distinguishes some human societies from others. This paper is an attempt to put the three ideals in a common frame, revealing their mutual connections and differences.

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism – as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (which interestingly is not just a phrase repeated from Hobbes and Locke to Diderot, but is also a medical phrase, used by Harvey, Mandeville and others). That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall (...) not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2, in Locke 1975; which Kant gets exactly wrong in his reading of Locke, in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader (Wolfe and Salter 2009, Wolfe 2010). Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” (Essay, I.i.6). There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism (see Norton 1981 and Gaukroger 2005), but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology (a claim about the senses as the source of knowledge) becomes an ontology – materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality (and/or the mind, in which case it needs, as David Hartley saw and Denis Diderot proclaimed more overtly, an account of the relation between mental processes and the brain). (David Armstrong, for one, denied that there could be an identification between empiricism and materialism on this point: eighteenth-century history of science seems to prove him wrong: see Armstrong 1968 and 1978.) Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century (Locke) to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us (Condillac), to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe (Diderot, giving a materialist cast to Spinozism), and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

In "Freedom and Resentment" P.F. Strawson, famously, advances a strong form of naturalism that aims to discredit kcepticism about moral responsibility by way of approaching these issues through an account of our reactive attitudes. However, even those who follow Strawson's general strategy on this subject accept that his strong naturalist program needs to be substantially modified, if not rejected. One of the most influential and important efforts to revise and reconstruct the Strawsonian program along these lines has been provided by (...) R. Jay Wallace, who presents a "narrower" construal of our reactive attitudes in his own account of what is involved in holding an agent responsible. In this paper I argue that Wallace's narrow construal of responsibility comes at too high a cost and that naturalists of a broadly Strawsonian cast should reject it. Related to this point, I argue that Wallace's narrow conception of responsibility is a product of his effort to construct his account within the confines of "the morality system" (i.e. as described by Bernard Williams) and that this way of construing responsibility leads into series of unnecessary and misleading oppositions. A more plausible middle path, I maintain, can be found between Strawson's excessively strong naturalist program and Wallace's narrow and restrictive view of responsibility. (shrink)

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, (...) we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

V práci sa zaoberám kritickou expozíciou argumentačných schém v kontexte pragma-dialektického prístupu k argumentácii. Nadväzujem pritom na prácu Hitchcocka a Wagemansa (2011), ktorí sa sústredili najmä na problémy súvisiace s typológiou argumentačných schém v pragma-dialektike. Pozorovania Hitchcocka a Wagemansa sú v priebehu výkladu kriticky hodnotené, prípadne upravené. Časť kritiky, ktorú v práci uvádzam, súvisí s tým, že niektoré dôležité aspekty argumentačných schém sú v rôznych pragma-dialektických publikáciách prezentované odlišne bez toho, aby sa odlišnosť akokoľvek komentovala, alebo zdôvodnila. Existencia takýchto zdôvodnení (...) nie je pritom iba znakom, ale aj nevyhnutnou podmienkou toho, aby sme akúkoľvek zmenu mohli nazývať pokrokom v teórii. Posledná časť práce je zameraná na problémy týkajúce sa hodnotenia argumentácie v pragma-dialektickom prístupe. Hoci článok prináša vlastné pozitívne návrhy, dôraz a celkový zámer spočíva predovšetkým na expozícii nedostatkov súčasného stavu pragma-dialektickej koncepcie argumentačných schém. Kľúčové slová: argumentačné schémy, kritické otázky, pragma-dialektický prístup k argumentácii, hodnotenie argumentov. (shrink)

In this chapter we deal with the challenge to the existence of free will and moral responsibility that is raised by the threat of determinism from a Wittgensteinian perspective. Our argument starts by briefly recapitulating Wittgenstein’s analysis of the practice of doubt in On Certainty. We subsequently turn to the problem of free will. We argue that the existence of free will is a basic certainty and that the thesis of determinism fails to cast doubt on it. We thereby make (...) use of – but also try to go beyond – Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his “Lectures on Freedom of the Will”. In the final section we focus more explicitly on moral responsibility. Inspired by P.F. Strawson’s work on free will and moral responsibility, which we take to be deeply Wittgensteinian, we argue that our practices of holding each other responsible manifest basic human certainties which cannot be meaningfully challenged by invoking the thesis of determinism. (shrink)

The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resolve this objection by casting it (...) as a practical concern, a pragmatic worry about implementation, which while germane to debates over the laws of war, need not undermine our convictions in the fundamental principles the revisionists advocate. This response is inadequate. Revisionists have not shown that soldiers should obey the laws of war, in practice, when they conflict with their other moral reasons – our worries about application remain intact. Moreover, a theory of war that offers only an account of the laws of war, and a set of fundamental principles developed in abstraction from feasibility constraints, is radically incomplete. We need to know how to apply those fundamental principles, and whether, when applied, they lead to defensible conclusions. Only two options seem to remain. Perhaps the revisionists’ arguments for their chosen fundamental principles are sufficiently compelling that we should stick with them, and accept their troubling conclusions – in other words, accept pacifism. Alternatively, we need to revise our fundamental principles, so that when applied they yield conclusions that we can more confidently endorse. -/- Though it does not save the revisionist view from the responsibility dilemma and cognate objections, the appeal to law does raise an important, and previously inadequately theorized, question – or, rather, resurrects a neglected topic, discussed in depth by historical just war theorists such as Grotius and Vattel. There are good grounds for distinguishing the laws of war from the morality of war, and for adjusting the former to accommodate predictable noncompliance, that should not impact on our account of the latter. Nonetheless, I have argued that there are some profound moral insights underlying both combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity: specifically, we cannot infer from a combatant’s side having not satisfied jus ad bellum that he may not justifiably use lethal force; and other things equal, it is more wrongful to harm a nonliable noncombatant than to harm a nonliable combatant. (shrink)

I explore how Vivekananda and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s development of Advaita Vedānta has an enormous impact on Neo-Hindu, and indeed, Indian, self-understandings of ethics and politics. I contend that Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan both conceive of the spirit of Hinduism as a radical form of equality that lies at the heart of an Advaitic (monistic) interpretation of the Upaniṣads. This metaphysical monism of consciousness of self and other in Advaita paves a solid conceptual road to an ethic of radical equality in both (...) the personal and the political spheres. (shrink)

Against the apparent casting away of poetry from contemporary philosophy of language and aesthetics which has left poetry forceless, I argue that poetry has a linguistic, philosophical, and even political force. Against the idea that literature (as novel) can teach us facts about the world, I argue that the force of literature (as poetry) resides in its capacity to change our ways of seeing. First, I contest views which consider poetry forceless by discussing Austin’s and Sartre’s views. Second, I explore (...) the concept of force in the realm of art—focusing on Nietzsche’s philosophy and Menke’s Kraft der Kunst—and the relations between linguistic, artistic, and political forces. Third, I consider how the transformative force of poetry can be considered political by turning to Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language and Meschonnic’s conception of poetry according to which the poem does something to language and the subject. To illustrate this transformative force of poetry, I analyse Caroline Zekri’s poem ‘Un pur rapport grammatical’. I therefore think of poetry not only as doing something with language, but also as doing something to language. To rephrase Austin’s famous title, and thus reverse his evaluation of poetry, poetry might reveal to us not only How to Do Things with Words, but how to do things to words and, through this doing, how to transform and affect the world. (shrink)

Příspěvek se věnuje problematice antického řeckého sportu, konkrétně významu sportovních zápolení a jejich výchovné a vzdělávací roli. Pozornost autor věnuje rozboru pozic filosofů Sókrata, Platóna a Aristotela. Po nastínění kontextu tématu představuje a interpretuje základní filosofické a náboženské premisy sportovního výkonu a jeho výchovné role. Řadí mezi ně úsilí o dosažení božské přízně, nesmrtelnosti, vyššího společenského postavení, ale i ideálů kalokagathia, areté a dalších ctností. Důležitý rozměr antického sportu spatřuje rovněž v jeho formativním potenciálu směřujícímu k přípravě na duševní život. (...) Hlavní část příspěvku se věnuje přístupu k pohybovým zápolením u filosofů Sókrata, Platóna a Aristotela, kteří svými úvahami k chápání výchovné role sportu podstatně přispěli. Následně se autor zaměřuje na identifikaci dobrého sportu podle zmíněných myslitelů a na zkoumání role sportu v kontextu dobrého života, který nahlíží v aristotelském rámci jako dosahování blaženosti. Cílem textu je identifikovat a vyzdvihnout výchovný smysl sportování, poukázat na jeho filosofické konotace a možnou roli sportu v otázce vedení dobrého života. ----------- This manuscript deals with the problematics of ancient Greek sport, specifically with the significance of sporting practices and their educational role. Attention is given to a detailed analysis of the positions of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. After demonstrating the context, the author presents and interprets fundamental philosophical and religious premises of the athletic performance and its educational role. Among the identified features are the effort of acquiring divine favour, immortality, higher social status, but also the ideals of kalokagathia, areté, and other virtues. Important dimension of ancient Greek sport is also found in its formative potential which aims at the preparation for intellectual life. The main part of the article is focused on the approaches of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle towards the sporting practices. These thinkers made an important contribution to the understanding of the educational role of sport. Then, the author identifies a good sport according to these thinkers and examines the role of such sport in the context of a good life, which is considered in the Aristotelian perspective as achieving beatitude (eudaimonia). The aim of this article is to identify and highlight an educational purpose of sport, underlines its philosophical connotations, and demonstrate its possible role in the context of a good life. (shrink)

A quite recent book casts the anthropologist Elizabeth Colson as a systems skeptic, with Max Gluckman attempting to counter her skepticism. In this paper, I offer clarifications of the skepticism and of the counter.

Why are pains bad for us? A natural answer is that it is just because of how they feel (or their felt-qualities). But this answer is cast into doubt by cases of people who are unbothered by certain pains of theirs. These pains retain their felt-qualities, but do not seem bad for the people in question. In this paper, I offer a new response to this problem. I argue that in such cases, the pains in question have become “just more (...) of the same,” and for this reason have ceased to be bad for the relevant individuals. It is because they (implicitly) recognise this that they are unbothered by such pains. (shrink)

Ambedkar denounced caste system for violating the respect and dignity of the individual; yet his critique of caste-ridden society also foregrounds the limits of the theory and practice of citizenship and liberal politics in India. Since membership of a caste group was not a voluntary choice, but determined by birth and hence a coercive association, the liberal view of the self as a totally unencumbered and radically free subject seemed plagued with difficulties. Though the nation state envisages a political community (...) co-extensive with one cultural community, it need not, Ambedkar argued, necessarily lead to abolition of discriminatory caste practices in civil society. To restore the cultural rights of stigmatised populations, unredeemed by the nation state, propelled Ambedkar to seek solution in B. (shrink)

Greenwood (2019) casts doubts upon whether a certain view about social groups (the view that social groups persist throughout changes in their membership, by virtue of the maintenance of their structure or function) is a fundamental metaphysical truth about social groups, rather than a theoretical truth about some or many social groups. In this note, I introduce a distinction between absolute and relative metaphysics, and argue that there are no 'fundamental metaphysical truths‘ (as Greenwood conceives of them) at all. (...) If there is one thing that should not persist here, it is absolute metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper examines to what extent Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics can give an adequate account for empty names in natural languages. It argues that the prospect is dim because of a tension between metaphysical austerity, non-vacuousness of theorems and empirical adequacy. Sainsbury (2005) proposed a Davidsonian account of empty names called ‘Reference Without Referents’ (RWR), which explicates reference in terms of reference-condition rather than referent, thus avoiding the issue of existence. This is an inspiring account. However, it meets several difficulties. First, (...) there is no non-vacuous, interpretive truth-condition available for any T-sentence containing an empty name, because by stipulation there is no way to compose a true atomic sentence using an empty name in RWR. The absence of an interpretive truth-condition implies the absence of an interpretive reference-condition. It also entails empirical inadequacy to support an interpretation because the related propositional attitude can never be truly satisfied. These considerations cast doubt on whether truth is the proper vehicle to articulate meaning. This paper suggests that we can alleviating the problem by employing truth-conditions varying across contexts of utterance, rather than just contexts of evaluation. The result is a two-dimensional model-theoretic approach to empty names. It involves a new function coined counterfactual reference and the account is compatible with both descriptivism and Millianism. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. This paper revisits the problem of mental causation by drawing on (...) a classical debate between Dharmakirti and the Indian materialists. The main argument of the paper is that expanding our conception of causality to accommodate phenomenal content can cast new light on the problem of mental causation. A satisfactory solution to the problem of mental causation must reject the completeness of the physical principle in favor of conceptions of causality that allow for phenomenal properties to play a causal-explanatory function. (shrink)

Each well-known proposed solution to the mind-body problem encounters an impasse. These take the form of an explanatory gap, such as the one between mental and physical, or between micro-subjects and macro-subject. The dialectical pressure to bridge these gaps is generating positions in which consciousness is becoming increasingly foundational. The most recent of these, cosmopsychism, typically casts the entire cosmos as a perspectival subject whose mind grounds those of more limited subjects like ourselves. I review the dialectic from materialism (...) and dualism through to panpsychism, suggesting that explanatory gaps in the latter stem from assuming foundational consciousness to be perspectival. Its renunciation may yield the notion of an aperspectival, universal, “non-dual” consciousness that grounds all manifestation and is unstructured by subject, object or any differentia. Not only is such consciousness suggestive of a natural successor to cosmopsychism, but it has also been reported to be the direct experience of mystics who claim to have transcended the individual perspective. Their purported insight — that our aperspectival conscious nature is identical to the ground of all being — has been termed “the Perennial Philosophy”. Believing this Perennial Philosophy to offer the most promising way forward in the mind-body problem, I construct from it the foundations of a metaphysical system that I call “Perennial Idealism”. This attempts to account for manifestation in terms of dispositional, imagery-bound subjects. I then address an age-old “Parmenidean” conundrum that I refer to as “the problem of the one and the many”: How can an undifferentiated substratum ground differentia without the ground itself differentiating? The proposed solution takes its cue from mystico-philosophical writings in the Advaita Vedānta tradition, known as the ajāta doctrine. (shrink)

Modern physics has cast doubt on Newton's idea of particles with definite properties. Do we have to go back to Aristotle for a new understanding of the ultimate nature of substance? If we ask, `what is the nature of substance?', we might be told that this substance is salt, that one is copper, or that the atomic nucleus is a mixture of protons and neutrons. But what are all these substances? What do they have in common which makes them substances? (...) We don't seem to think that such things as colours, numbers, or shapes are by themselves `substantial enough' to be substances in their own right. We therefore change our question to `what is it to be a substance?', or to `what is the ultimate nature of the simplest substances?'. (shrink)