In this chapter, I argue that Kant can be read as holding that "ought" judgments follow from certain "is" judgments by mere analysis. More specifically, I defend an interpretation according to which (1) Kant holds that “S ought to F” is analytically equivalent to “If, as it can and would were there no other influences on the will, S’s faculty of reason determined S’s willing, S would F” and (2) Kant’s notions of reason, the will, and freedom are all fundamentally (...) non-normative. Not only does this reading have significant textual support, but, I claim, it also sheds light on why Kant takes freedom and morality to mutually imply one another. Moreover, while Kant does take there to be a gap between moral judgments and empirical descriptive statements, that gap is consistent with the analysis in question. I conclude by arguing that this rejection of the is-ought gap is not as philosophically implausible as it might seem, with a focus on G.E. Moore and Hume’s arguments for certain ‘gaps’ between the normative and the non-normative. (shrink)

This book offers a ground-up defense of objective morality, drawing inspiration from a wide range of philosophers, including John Locke, Arthur Schopenhauer, Iris Murdoch, Nel Noddings, and David Lewis. The core claim is compassion is our capacity to perceive other creatures' pains, pleasures, and desires. Non-compassionate people are therefore perceptually lacking, regardless of how much factual knowledge they might have. Marshall argues that people who do have this form of compassion thereby fit a familiar paradigm of moral goodness. His (...) argument involves the identification of an epistemic good which Marshall dubs "being in touch". To be in touch with some property of a thing requires experiencing it in a way that reveals that property - that is, experiencing it as it is in itself. Only compassion, Marshall argues, lets us be in touch with others' motivational mental properties. -/- This conclusion about compassion has two important metaethical consequences. First, it generates an answer to the question ";Why be moral?", which has been a central philosophical concern since Plato. Second, it provides the keystone for a novel form of moral realism. This form of moral realism has a distinctive set of virtues: it is anti-relativist, naturalist, and able to identify a necessary connection between moral representation and motivation. The view also implies that there is an epistemic asymmetry between virtuous and vicious agents, according to which only morally good people can fully face reality. (shrink)

Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that suicide is both foolish and futile. But while many commentators have expressed sympathy for his charge of foolishness, most regard his charge of futility as indefensible even within his own system. In this paper, I offer a defense of Schopenhauer’s futility charge, based on metaphysical and psychological considerations. On the metaphysical front, Schopenhauer’s view implies that psychological connections extend beyond death. Drawing on Parfit’s discussion of personal identity, I argue that those connections have personal significance, such (...) that suicide does not allow one, as Hamlet hopes, simply “not to be.” On the psychological front, I argue that a distinction between agents’ intentions and underlying desires makes room for Schopenhauer to claim that paradigmatic suicidal agents ultimately desire the opposite of what suicide accomplishes. I conclude by showing how the resulting account of futility can buttress the charge of foolishness as well. My interpretation still leaves Schopenhauer vulnerable to certain objections, but shows that his account is significantly more defensible than previous commentators have realized. (shrink)

In this chapter, Colin Marshall argues that Schopenhauer’s views about the foundations of morality pose important challenges for five tenets of contemporary metaethics. After presenting these challenges, Marshall explores the potential viability of contemporary Schopenhauerian approaches to metaethics that would leave aside his radical metaphysical monism.

According to strong metaphysical readings of Kant, Kant believes there are noumenal substances and causes. Proponents of these readings have shown that these readings can be reconciled with Kant’s claims about the limitations of human cognition. An important new challenge to such readings, however, has been proposed by Markus Kohl, focusing on Kant’s occasional statements about the divine or intuitive intellect. According to Kohl, how an intuitive intellect represents is a decisive measure for how noumena are for Kant, but an (...) intuitive intellect would not represent using metaphysical categories like those of substance and causation. I argue that Kohl’s argument does not succeed, since it overlooks the possibility that the intuitive intellect only indirectly represents certain noumenal facts. In addition, in response to a secondary argument Kohl suggests, I argue that Kant’s apparently anti-metaphysical statements about the content of the categories can be read as merely describing the constitution of the categories, instead of what they represent. Thus, while Kohl advances the debate by raising an under-appreciated question, his argument against the strong metaphysical reading is unsound. (shrink)

Political persuasion can express moral respect. In this article, however, I rely on two psychological assumptions to argue that political persuasion is generally prima facie disrespectful: (1) that we maintain our political beliefs largely for non-epistemic, personal reasons and (2) that our political beliefs are connected to our epistemic esteem. Given those assumptions, a persuader can either ignore the relevant personal reasons, explicitly address them, or implicitly address them. Ignoring those reasons, I argue, constitutes prima facie insensitivity. Explicitly addressing them (...) constitutes a form of prima facie incivility. Finally, implicitly addressing them covertly treats those personal reasons as psychological puppet strings, constituting prima facie objectionable manipulation. This prima facie insensitivity, incivility, and manipulation are each prima facie failures of respect, either for the persuadee’s rationality or for their agency. Political persuasion can sometimes be all-things-considered justified, but these moral hazards can produce reasonable guilt, resentment, and blowback. (shrink)

On the traditional reading, Schopenhauer claims that compassion is the recognition of deep metaphysical unity. In this paper, I defend and develop the traditional reading. I begin by addressing three recent criticisms of that reading from Sandra Shapshay: that it fails to accommodate Schopenhauer's restriction to sentient beings, that it cannot explain his moral ranking of egoism over malice, and that Schopenhauer requires some level of distinction to remain in compassion. Against Shapshay, I argue that Schopenhauer does not restrict compassion (...) to sentient beings and that a more metaphysically refined version of the traditional reading can accommodate both Schopenhauer's moral ranking of characters and allow for some level of distinction in compassion. I then turn to four further questions for the traditional reading: what the relation is between the feeling of compassionate pain and the recognition of metaphysical unity, how cognitions mediate compassion, whether compassion is limited to the present, and how the feeling of compassion relates to Schopenhauer's fundamental moral principle. I conclude by explaining how, in a reductive vein, the traditional reading can also allow for compassion to have normative content. (shrink)

Kant's philosophy promises to explain various synthetic a priori claims. Yet, as several of his commentators have noted, it is hard to see how these explanations could work unless they themselves rested on unexplained synthetic a priori claims. Since Kant appears to demand explanations for all synthetic a priori claims, it would seem that his project fails on its own terms. I argue, however, that Kant holds that explanations are required only for synthetic a priori claims about (purportedly) experience-independent entities, (...) and that his project rests on a rationalist method of reflection that justifies certain basic synthetic a priori claims. (shrink)

Spinoza claims we can control any passion by forming a more clear and distinct idea of it. The interpretive consensus is that Spinoza is either wrong or over-stating his view. I argue that Spinoza’s view is plausible and insightful. After breaking down Spinoza’s characterization of the relevant act, I consider four existing interpretations and conclude that each is unsatisfactory. I then consider a further problem for Spinoza: how his definitions of ‘action’ and ‘passion’ make room for passions becoming action. I (...) propose two solutions to this problem, both of which yield a hint regarding what act Spinoza has in mind. Using that hint, I propose that we can appreciate Spinoza’s insight by considering how philosophizing about a feeling can 'kill the mood.' The act of grasping how a passion exemplifies certain general truths, I hold, is a distinctly rational activity that has all the features Spinoza describes. I conclude by showing how this interpretation fits with Spinoza’s larger views on rational knowledge, rational joy, the comprehensibility of passions, and the relation between second- and first-order ideas. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes several key themes in Kant’s views about modality. We begin with the pre-critical Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, in which Kant distinguishes between formal and material elements of possibility, claims that all possibility requires an actual ground, and argues for the existence of a single necessary being. We then briefly consider how Kant’s views change in his mature period, especially concerning the role of form and thought in defining modality. (...) Kant’s mature views, however, present two difficult interpretive puzzles. The first puzzle concerns whether Kant has a generally reductive view of modality. While Kant’s views on logical modality, the role of actuality in grounding possibility, and the relation of modality to cognition all suggest reduction, we argue that the categorial status of modal concepts and the difficulty in even identifying amodal grounds for modal facts all suggest a non-reductive view. The second puzzle concerns whether Kant accepts modal facts or properties at the noumenal level. While Kant’s appeal to noumenal necessary connections, the contingency of noumenal willing, and the idea of a necessary noumenal being suggest that he endorses noumenal modality, his claims that modal concepts express only relations to the faculty of cognition and his claim that modal concepts arise from our distinctive psychological structures, we argue, suggest that he rejects noumenal modality. We conclude by considering potential solutions to these puzzles. (shrink)

The one-world interpretation of Kant's idealism holds that appearances and things in themselves are, in some sense, the same things. Yet this reading faces a number of problems, all arising from the different features Kant seems to assign to appearances and things in themselves. I propose a new way of understanding the appearance/thing in itself distinction via an Aristotelian notion that I call, following Kit Fine, a ‘qua-object.’ Understanding appearances and things in themselves as qua-objects provides a clear sense in (...) which they can be the same things while differing in many of their features. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years there have been a number of attempts to analyse the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties in terms of the facts about naturalness. This article discusses the three most influential of these attempts, each of which involve David Lewis. These are Lewis's 1983 analysis, his 1986 analysis, and his joint 1998 analysis with Rae Langton.

Robustly realistic metaphysical readings of Kant’s mature views have become popular in recent years, largely because of the apparent coherence of applying unschematized categories like that of causation to things in themselves. There is, however, an overlooked problem that arises even for robust realist readings that privilege unschematized categories. The problem is that Kant provides all the elements for what is now called a ‘debunking explanation’ of metaphysical representations of things in themselves. His account of the categories as arising from (...) mere forms of judgment, and being applied primarily for the unity of consciousness, is detached from the issue of whether there are causes among things in themselves. This detachment seems to imply that it would be a huge coincidence if unschematized categories corresponded to any such causes. After making this argument, using the category of causation as my central case, I consider three potential responses: that Kant’s account implicitly appeals to things in themselves’ causation, that Kant has a separate account of non-coincidental representation, and that Kant’s account is merely incomplete in a way that poses no debunking threat. None of these responses, I argue, are successful, so I conclude that either robustly realistic metaphysical readings are mistaken, or there is internal incoherence in Kant’s views. (shrink)

Feminist studies of female genital cutting (FGC) provide ample evidence that many women exercise effective agency with respect to this practice, both as accommodators and as resisters. The influence of culture on autonomy is ambiguous: women who resist cultural mandates for FGC do not necessarily enjoy greater autonomy than do those women who accommodate the practice, yet it is clear that some social contexts are more conducive to autonomy than others. In this paper, I explore the implications for autonomy theory (...) of these understandings of the relation between culture, FGC, and women’s agency. I review the range of worldwide FGC practices – including “corrective” surgery for “ambiguous genitalia” in Western cultures as well as the various initiation rites observed in some African and Asian cultures – and the diverse cultural rationales for different forms of FGC. I argue that neither latitudinarian, value‐neutral accounts of autonomy nor restrictive, value‐saturated accounts adequately explain women’s agentic position with respect to FGC. I then analyze a number of educational programs that have enhanced women's autonomy, especially by strengthening their introspection, empathy, and imagination. Such programs, which engage women's autonomy skills without exposing them to autonomy‐disabling cultural alienation, promote autonomy‐within‐culture. This understanding of autonomy as socially situated, however, entails neither endorsement of FGC nor resignation to its persistence. (shrink)

É amplamente reconhecido que para mitigar a mudança climática antropogênica são necessários urgentes esforços institucionais em várias dimensões: tecnológicos, infraestruturais, mas também socioculturais. Isso significa que, para que haja a transição ecológica para uma sociedade mais verde e sustentável, um conjunto de mudanças estruturais econômicas, políticas e culturais deverão ser rearticuladas nos próximos anos. Por um lado, ao passo que é inegável que, para conter a mudança antropogênica, o uso do poder institucional deve ser usado de modo mais incisivo nas (...) mais diversas esferas que estruturam o social. Por outro lado, não fica evidentemente se as liberdades serão afetadas e, em caso positivo, como elas serão afetadas. Diante da urgência do problema, o artigo propõe normativamente explorar o conflito entre, por um lado, a exigência do uso do poder institucional para conter a mudança climática antropogênica em tempo e, por outro, a garantia pelo mais amplo esquema de liberdades políticas, econômicas e civis nas sociedades democráticas liberais. (shrink)

Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an important exception to this pattern of neglect, and this paper explores Mackenzie’s work (...) on embodiment and self-narrative with the aim of better understanding the adequacy of autobiographical narrative as an account of the agentic self. I argue that Mackenzie’s narrative account of embodied subjectivity and agency is incomplete, for it over-estimates the reach of narrative and underestimates the cognitive and agentic powers of the lived body. (shrink)

Along with fresh interpretations of Plato, this book proposes a radically new approach to reading him, one that can teach us about protreptic, as it is called, by reimagining the ways in which Socrates engages in it. Protreptic, as it is conceived in the book, is an attempt to bring about a fundamental change of heart in people so that they want truth more than anything else. In taking the approach developed in this book, one doesn't try to get Plato (...) right but simply uses his dialogues as a theoretical tool for gaining insight into protreptic. The book argues that by analyzing Socrates' behavior in the right way, one can better understand how to foster thoughtfulness nowadays, and there is a need to foster it, in part since the health of democracy is at stake. (shrink)

Kant’s transcendental idealism hinges on a distinction between appearances and things in themselves. The debate about how to understand this distinction has largely ignored the way that Kant applies this distinction to the self. I argue that this is a mistake, and that Kant’s acceptance of a single, unified self in both his theoretical and practical philosophy causes serious problems for the ‘two-world’ interpretation of his idealism.

I argue that Spinoza is more of a moral realist than an anti-realist. More specifically, I argue that Spinoza is more of a realist than Kant, and that his view has deep similarities with Plato's metaethics. Along the way, I identify three approaches to the moral realism/anti-realism distinction. Classifying Spinoza as a moral realist brings out a number of important complexities that have been overlooked by many of Spinoza's readers and by many contemporary metaethicists.

In this paper, I argue that Plato's views on Forms play a central role in his educational philosophy. In response to what certain commentators have recently written, I contend that this interpretation not only is accurate but also is advantageous because of how it can help philosophy of education. I also address the view, proposed by one philosopher of education, that Plato believes that the most valuable sort of knowledge cannot be fully expressed in words and that the objects of (...) this knowledge are something other than transcendent Forms. Preferable to that view, I argue, is the idea that Plato wants knowledge of Forms which is nonrepresentational. (shrink)

What a person is doing often depends on that person’s thought about what they are doing, or about the wider circumstances of their action. For example, whether my killing is murder or manslaughter depends, in part, on whether I understand that what I am doing is killing you, and on whether I understand that my killing is unjustified. Similarly, if I know that the backpack I am taking is yours, then my taking it may be an act of theft; but (...) it is not theft if I simply mistook your backpack for my own. And if I don’t know that in signing a document I’m promising to do some thing, then in signing it I’m not promising to do this at all. -/- According to Elizabeth Anscombe, a central task of philosophical psychology is to articulate this dependency of action on thought. And in a range of papers published during the 1960s, Anscombe sought to elucidate various aspects of this dependency. In this paper we give a systematic overview of how Anscombe understands this dependency, and in the process reveal the conceptual framework underlying Anscombe’s thinking about perception, desire, intention, voluntariness, responsibility, guilt, and sin. (shrink)

The “film as philosophy” (FAP) hypothesis turned into a field if its own right during the 2000s, after S. Mulhall’s On Film (2001). In this work, Mulhall defended that some films philosophize for themselves. This caused controversy. Around the same time of On Film’s release, B. Russell published the article “The philosophical limits of film” (2000). This article had one of the first attacks against FAP, posing some main objections based on metaphilosophical grounds, which were called the “generality” and the (...) “explicitness” objections. These objections made by Russell and by M. Smith are based on the idea that film and philosophy are too different in their purposes or ways of presentation, ideas that are grounded in implicit or explicit conceptions of philosophy. In this chapter, these will be analyzed, as well as some other metaphilosophically grounded objections, as a line of reasoning connecting to attempts of responding to them will be drawn. After doing so, it will be concluded that their metaphilosophical grounds are implausible, and, thus, they are not definite objections against FAP. (shrink)

Interpreters of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism face a dilemma: it seems to either beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic or else offer a disappointingly Berkeleyan conclusion. In this article I offer an interpretation of the Refutation on which it does not beg the question against the Cartesian sceptic. After defending a principle about question-begging, I identify four premises concerning our representations that there are textual reasons to think Kant might be implicitly assuming. Using those assumptions, I offer a reconstruction (...) of Kant’s Refutation that avoids the interpretative dilemma, though difficult questions about the argument remain. (shrink)

I argue that Schopenhauer’s views on the foundations of morality challenge the widely-held belief that moral realism requires cognitivism about moral judgments. Schopenhauer’s core metaethical view consists of two claims: that moral worth is attributed to actions based in compassion, and that compassion, in contrast to egoism, arises from deep metaphysical insight into the non-distinctness of beings. These claims, I argue, are sufficient for moral realism, but are compatible with either cognitivism or non-cognitivism. While Schopenhauer’s views of moral judgment are (...) not obviously consistent, I show how various passages suggest a form of non-cognitivism. This non-cognitivism, I claim, is compatible with moral realism. (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also at stake. (...) I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

Em Uma Teoria da Justiça John Rawls ao eleger como bem primário mais importante as bases sociais do autorrespeito (autoestima), aponta que a capacidade do indivíduo de reconhecer seu próprio valor moral e a legitimidade do seu plano de vida também é objeto de justiça social. Martha Nussbaum, Axel Honneth e Avishai Margalit defendem que a humilhação privaria os indivíduos de respeitarem (ou estimarem) a si mesmos. Neste artigo será salientado como cada autor, à sua maneira, salienta pontos sobre a (...) humilhação: a humilhação institucional (Avishai Margalit), a humilhação como a face pública da vergonha social (Martha Nussbaum), e por fim a humilhação como rompimento de expectativas normativas de reconhecimento (Axel Honneth). (shrink)

In this essay, I offer some of the reasons to think that Plato has a substantial contribution to make to contemporary thinking about moral education. To allow a sense of how wide the range of reasons is, I start by listing ten miscellaneous reasons that one can compellingly offer and some of which scholars *have* offered. Then I present my preferred reason, which involves a way of approaching Plato that is new and unorthodox. When you approach Plato this way, you (...) don't try to interpret him correctly. Instead, you use his writings simply as a tool for theorizing, and what you theorize about is how best to carry out the Socratic project of leading other people to self-examination. (shrink)

: Two common ways of explaining akrasia will be presented, one which focuses on strength of desire and the other which focuses on action issuing from practical judgment. Though each is intuitive in a certain way, they both fail as explanations of the most interesting cases of akrasia. Spinoza 's own thoughts on bondage and the affects follow, from which a Spinozist explanation of akrasia is constructed. This account is based in Spinoza 's mechanistic psychology of cognitive affects. Because Spinoza (...) 's account explains action asissuing from modes of mind that are both cognitive and affective, it captures the intuitions that motivate the two traditional views while avoiding the pitfalls that result from their one‐sided approaches. This project will allow us a fuller understanding of Spinozist moral psychology. In addition to this historical value, the Spinozist theory may offer a satisfactory explanation of certain hard cases of akrasia while avoiding the problems be set by other theories. For this reason, the Spinozist account could also be seen as a useful contribution to our philosophical understanding of the phenomenon of akrasia. (shrink)

In the first Enquiry, Hume takes the experience of exerting force against a solid body to be a key ingredient of the vulgar idea of power, so that the vulgar take that experience to provide us with an impression of power. Hume provides two arguments against the vulgar on this point: the first concerning our other applications of the idea of power and the second concerning whether that experience yields certainty about distinct events. I argue that, even if we accept (...) Hume’s conception of the vulgar’s approach, neither of Hume’s arguments succeeds. The first argument can be resisted either by using the very arguments Hume provides concerning other causal representations or by simply rejecting Hume’s strict empiricism. The second argument can be resisted on epistemological grounds: there is no reason to think that an experience of a maximally-strong metaphysical connection would provide a maximally-strong epistemological connection. Unlike some recent neo-Anscombean responses to the second argument, my response does not require challenging Hume’s view that causal relations are strictly necessary. Though I do not attempt to translate the resilience of the vulgar view into contemporary terms, the failure of Hume’s arguments challenges one of the long-standing motivations for Humean approaches to causation. (shrink)

Não é novidade no ambiente acadêmico as reticências da teórica crítica Nancy Fraser para com a teoria da justiça de John Rawls. Mais especificamente, sua desconfiança é que a justiça rawlsiana não seja capaz de capturar devidamente a complexidade das desigualdades sociais nas sociedades contemporâneas: seja porque sua teoria moral (da justiça) é presumidamente descolada de uma teoria social de fundo; seja porque sua teoria moral (da justiça) é considerada reducionista (ou “monista”). Porém, o espírito do presente artigo não é (...) de aprofundar suas diferenças metodológicas, mas sim colocar as bases para se pensar possíveis “semelhanças de família” entre suas concepções de justiça. Afinal, ambas as formulações se apresentam como abordagens “deontológicas”, ou seja, que priorizam o correto (o justo) sobre o bem. Na primeira seção, retorna-se ao célebre debate redistribuição e reconhecimento, onde Fraser apresenta as novas abordagens liberais – com destaque à de Rawls - como as principais representantes do paradigma redistributivo no cenário contemporâneo. Ao mergulhar nessas passagens, é possível revelar precisamente quais os pontos de concordância e discordância de Fraser para com a teoria deontológica de Rawls. Dando continuidade, na segunda seção é explorado sua principal discordância: o presumido “reducionismo” da teoria da justiça rawlsiana à dimensão redistributiva (econômica), aqui chamada de crítica do reducionismo redistributivo. Se essa objeção procede ou não é objeto da terceira e última seção. Nela, é argumentado que mesmo que as preocupações normativas de Fraser (quanto ao problema do reducionismo) sejam válidas, ainda assim, esse problema não se aplica à teoria rawlsiana. Ao contrário, é argumentado que é possível encontrar “semelhanças de família” entre as concepções de Fraser e Rawls: (a) no seu alicerce e compromisso com o pluralismo, (b) na sua investigação e defesa do status igualitário entre as pessoas e, finalmente, (c) na constatação que o ideal normativo da igualdade democrática entre as pessoas (ou paridade de participação) requer dos arranjos institucionais não somente a redistribuição de recursos e bens econômicos, como também elementos de qualidades diferentes. (shrink)

This chapter explores a philosophical hypothesis about the nature of (some) probabilities encountered in social sciences. It should be of interest to those with philosophical concerns about the foundations of probability, and to social scientists and philosophers of science who are somewhat puzzled by the nature of probability in social domains. As will become clear below, the chapter is not intended as a contribution to an empirical methodology such as a particular way of applying statistics.

O debate fomentado nos anos oitenta entre liberais e “comunitaristas” tende a contrastar radicalmente as concepções teóricas de John Rawls e Charles Taylor, sendo o primeiro o representante principal da vertente liberal e o segundo do “comunitarismo”. Ao contrário do que sustenta essa distinção, neste artigo proponho ir para além dela, a fim de defender que há convergências dos autores no que tange à discussão sobre o pluralismo. Em um primeiro momento, apresento os diagnósticos de Rawls e de Taylor quanto (...) ao fato do pluralismo nas sociedades modernas como uma característica contextual irreversível (I). Em um segundo momento, diante da tensão ética insuperável entre divergentes concepções bem, a saída mais viável caminha para a justiça. Para tanto, desenvolvo a concepção de “justiça política” de Rawls em “O Liberalismo Político” e as publicações mais recentes de Charles Taylor como em “Secularism and Freedom of Conscience”, “A Secular Age” e “Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism?”, que parecem sustentar certa “virada liberal-rawlsiana” no pensamento do autor (II). Em um terceiro momento, efetuo uma distinção entre o fato do pluralismo (razoável) e o valor do pluralismo, para finalmente concluir o artigo argumentando que tanto Rawls como Taylor tendem a defender o pluralismo como um valor político para as instituições e não como um valor moral abrangente para os indivíduos. (shrink)

Este artigo propõe apresentar como ao longo das três gerações da Teoria Crítica – Max Horkheimer, Jünger Habermas, Axel Honneth – foi-se modificando o vocabulário acerca do que ela deveria denunciar ou expor. Segundo Horkheimer, caberia à Teoria Crítica expor as contradições sociais do sistema de sua época, já o segundo Habermas expõe as tensões inerentes às sociedades complexas e, por fim, Axel Honneth, os desenvolvimentos falhos (ou desviantes) da ideia de liberdade. Cada autor, a sua maneira,.

Despite how revered Socrates is among many educators nowadays, he can seem in the end to be a poor model for them, particularly because of how often he refutes his interlocutors and poses leading questions. As critics have noted, refuting people can turn them away from inquiry instead of drawing them in, and being too directive with them can squelch independent thought. I contend, though, that Socrates' practices are more defensible than they often look: although there are risks in refuting (...) people and posing leading questions, Socrates has sensible ways of minimizing the risks, ways that are feasible even for teachers nowadays, and there are times when the risks are worth taking. I illustrate my point by discussing Plato's _Meno_. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers' attacks (...) and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers' misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

There have been many attempts to retire dualism from active philosophic life, replacing it with something less removed from science, but we are no closer to that goal now than fifty years ago. I propose breaking the stalemate by considering marginal perspectives that may help identify unrecognized assumptions that limit the mainstream debate. Comparison with Whitehead highlights ways that opponents of dualism continue to uphold the Cartesian “real distinction” between mind and body. Whitehead, by contrast, insists on a conceptual distinction: (...) there can no more be body without mind than mind without body (at least at the level of ultimate constituents). Key to this integration is Whitehead’s understanding that mind, at its most rudimentary, is simply the intrinsic temporality of a physical event. Thus, the resulting form of “panpsychism” is more naturalistic than commonly supposed, and it solves both the composition problem (traditionally fatal to panpsychism) and the “hard problem.”. (shrink)

This paper argues that potential cases of oppression, such as sex trafficking, can sometimes comprise autonomous choices by the trafficked individuals. This issue still divides radical from liberal feminists, with the former wanting to ‘rescue’ the ‘victims’ and the latter insisting that there might be good reasons for ‘hiding from the rescuers.’ This article presents new arguments for the liberal approach and raises two demands: first, help organizations should be run by affected women and be open-minded about whether or not (...) the trafficked individuals should remain in the sex industry. Second, the career choices of trafficked individuals should be expanded by the introduction of an opportunity-extending right to asylum. (shrink)

It is often said that human rights are the rights that people possess simply in virtue of being human – that is, in virtue of their intrinsic, dignity-defining common humanity. Yet, on closer inspection the human rights landscape doesn’t look so even. Once we bring perpetrators of human rights abuse and their victims into the picture, attributions of humanity to persons become unstable. In this essay, I trace the ways in which rights discourse ascribes variable humanity to certain categories of (...) people. I set the stage for my discussion of the human in relation to human rights by examining John Locke’s account of the justification for punishment. For Locke, in committing a crime one abrogates one’s humanity and forfeits one’s rights. Likewise, I argue, human rights discourse takes a scalar view of humanity. I consider victims of genocide who are dehumanized as helpless and passive, victims of state persecution who are super-humanized as righteously agentic, and perpetrators of genocide who are dehumanized as out-of-control beasts. In each case I use relevant testimony to argue that the scalar view of humanity is factually incorrect and morally deplorable. For genocide victims, I discuss testimony that Selma Leydesdorff gathered from women who survived the Srebrenica massacre. For a victim of persecution, I discuss Liao Yiwu’s memoire of his detention and imprisonment in China because of his artwork protesting the Tiananmen Square massacre. For perpetrators of genocide, I discuss testimony Jean Hatzfeld gathered from Hutu men who systematically murdered Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide. Finally, I apply my critique of dehumanized and super-humanized victims and dehumanized perpetrators to the problem of transnational trafficking in persons and argue that the view I advocate necessitates reforming immigration policy with respect to persons trafficked into forced labor. (shrink)

In one of his arguments for taking compassion to be the basis of morality, Schopenhauer offers a thought experiment involving two characters: Titus and Caius. The 'Titus Argument,' as I call it, has been misunderstood by many of Schopenhauer's readers, but is, I argue, worthy of attention by contemporary ethicists and metaethicists. In this chapter, I clarify the argument's structure, methodology, and its key philosophical move, drawing comparisons with Newton's experimental methodology in optics and Raimond Gaita's moral parodies.

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

This collection of new essays focuses on metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons can add to contemporary discussions of the foundations of morality. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the (...) Mexica (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony, naturalism, moral perception, and the nature of moral realism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy. (shrink)