The revolutionary outbreak in a variety of civilizations centered around 600 B.C.E., a period in which the great world religions as well as philosophy emerged, from Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Buddha to the works of Greek and Chinese philosophers, has been named the Axial Age by Karl Jaspers. Yet 75 years earlier, in 1873, unknown to Jaspers and still unknown to the world, John Stuart Stuart-Glennie elaborated a fully developed and more nuanced theory of what he termed (...) The Moral Revolution to characterize the period. This book also brings to light the previously undiscussed ideas of D. H. Lawrence on the phenomenon from 20 years before Jaspers, the seldom mentioned contributions of Lewis Mumford, and proposes a new context for understanding the phenomenon. Halton rewrites the history of this fascinating theory and opens new ways of conceiving the meaning of The Moral Revolution for today. (shrink)

In 1873, 75 years before Karl Jaspers published his theory of the Axial Age in 1949, unknown to Jaspers and to contemporary scholars today, Scottish folklorist John Stuart Stuart-Glennie elaborated the first fully developed and nuanced theory of what he termed “the Moral Revolution” to characterize the historical shift emerging roughly around 600 BCE in a variety of civilizations, most notably ancient China, India, Judaism, and Greece, as part of a broader critical philosophy of history. He continued to write (...) on the idea over decades in books and articles and also presented his ideas to the fledgling Sociological Society of London in 1905, which were published the following year in the volume Sociological Papers, Volume 2. This article discusses Stuart-Glennie’s ideas on the moral revolution in the context of his philosophy of history, including what he termed “panzooinism”; ideas with implications for contemporary debates in theory, comparative history, and sociology of religion. It shows why he should be acknowledged as the originator of the theory now known as the axial age, and also now be included as a significant sociologist in the movement toward the establishment of sociology. (shrink)

This chapter examines the lost legacy of John Stuart-Glennie (1841-1910), a contributor to the founding of sociology and a major theorist, whose work was known in his lifetime but disappeared after his death. Stuart-Glennie was praised by philosopher John Stuart Mill, was a friend of and influence upon playwright George Bernard Shaw, and was an active contributor to the fledgling Sociological Society in London in the first decade of the twentieth century. Stuart-Glennie’s most significant idea in hindsight was his theory (...) of what he termed in 1873, “the moral revolution,” delineating the revolutionary changes across different civilizations in the period 2,500 years ago, roughly centered around 500-600 BCE. This is the era currently known as “the axial age,” after Karl Jaspers coined that term in 1949. Stuart-Glennie’s theory of the moral revolution is framed within a three-stage view of history, the first of which involved an outlook he characterized as “panzooinism,” and sometimes as “naturianism.” This theory of aboriginal and early civilizational outlooks is also notable and worthy of consideration in contemporary context, and as a contribution to “the new animism.” The chapter concludes by considering whether the moral revolution/axial age, whose effects have continued for the past 2500 years, is sustainable in the age of the unsustainable Anthropocene. (shrink)

The rise and legacy of world religions out of that period centered roughly around 500-600 BCE, what John Stuart-Glennie termed in 1873 the moral revolution, and Karl Jaspers later, in 1949, called the axial age, has been marked by heightened ideas of transcendence. Yet ironically, the world itself, in the literal sense of the actual earth, took on a diminished role as a central element of religious sensibility in the world religions, particularly in the Abrahamic religions. Given the issue (...) today of ecological unsustainability, including massive die-offs of wildlife and ever-increasing global human population and consumption, the legacy of those world religions face the question I consider here: Can religion transcend the earth in the long run? With the Axial Age/Moral Revolution, comes the possibility of transcendence of the world per se. The moral revolution/Axial Age represented significant changes in civilization, to be sure, but it can also be taken, as I do, as a second phase in the radical shift to anthropocentric mind already begun with the advent of agriculturally based civilization. The axial ideal of transcendence connects to a larger ideal, manifest not only in the legacies of the world religions but in contemporary science and technology, of a philosophy of escape from the earth. I show how ideas of axial transcendence, celebrated by scholars such as Jaspers and Bellah, nevertheless involve an unacknowledged tragic cost, the forgetting of the earth and its lessons and limits as central to what I have termed elsewhere, “sustainable wisdom.” . (shrink)

Thus far most of the scholarship on the axial age has followed Karl Jaspers’ denial that nature could be a significant source and continuing influence in the historical development of human consciousness. Yet more than a half century before Jaspers, the originator of the first nuanced theory of what Jaspers termed the axial age, John Stuart-Glennie, mapped out a contrasting philosophy of history that allowed a central role to nature in historical human development. This essay concerns issues related to (...) my book, From the Axial Age to the Moral Revolution, and begins with a discussion of how I came to uncover the forgotten work of John Stuart-Glennie. Although Jaspers and Stuart-Glennie each drew similar conclusions regarding many of the facts of the moral revolution respectively the Axial Age, there are significant differences in their philosophies of history, concerning, for example the problem, whether history can be regarded deterministically or as an open whole, and whether nature can be a source of profound spiritual significance and even transcendence or whether that realm is limited to historical consciousness. I also briefly discuss two other overlooked contributors, namely D. H. Lawrence, who wrote on the phenomena twenty years before Jaspers, and Lewis Mumford, who is one of the first writers to draw from Jaspers' work. I then respond to four diverse scholarly essays on my book, delineating in the process my own philosophy of history as a progress in precision, paradoxically counteracted by a regressive contraction of mind. (shrink)

The main concern of the first eugenists, such as Karl Pearson and Walter Weldon of University College London , were the perceived intelligence factors considered to be correlated with the social class. In his speech "Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics", Karl Pearson equates eugenics with a field of medicine. Some areas of medicine that are not commonly recognized as eugenic affect the human genes background. These include sterilization and surgical techniques that allow the functioning of reproductive organs. Even (...) medicines that do not directly involve reproductive organs can alter the gene pool. Genetic abnormalities in such individuals are thus duplicated, modifying the genetic background. On this basis, such practices are widely accepted as more radical eugenic processes. (shrink)

This book is a record of my dialogues with Stephen Hawking, his graduate assistants and his nurses during a four city public lecture tour I organized for Hawking, including Portland, Eugene, Seattle, Vancouver, BC. We discussed 20th century science and philosophy of science. Since I was often the one being questioned, much of the contents reflect my PhD research at the University of London. My focus was on understanding the limits of science, as represented by quantum theory and relativity. My (...) mentors had been Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos, and I was strongly influenced by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. In one in depth presentation to Hawking I suggested that Newtonian space-time and Maxwellian space-time were complementary, were defined by complementary symmetry principles. I had opportunity to present the same arguments to Kip Thorne and Freeman Dyson. Hawking simply remarked that I 'may be right'. Thorne confirmed that practitioners of General Relativity use both depending on the problem at hand. Dyson was emphatic – "Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.". (shrink)

Stereotypes shape inferences in philosophical thought, political discourse, and everyday life. These inferences are routinely made when thinkers engage in language comprehension or production: We make them whenever we hear, read, or formulate stories, reports, philosophical case-descriptions, or premises of arguments – on virtually any topic. These inferences are largely automatic: largely unconscious, non-intentional, and effortless. Accordingly, they shape our thought in ways we can properly understand only by complementing traditional forms of philosophical analysis with experimental methods from psycholinguistics. This (...) paper seeks, first, to bring out the wider philosophical relevance of stereotypical inference, well beyond familiar topics like gender and race. Second, we wish to provide philosophers with a toolkit to experimentally study these ubiquitous inferences and what intuitions they may generate. This paper explains what stereotypes are, and why they matter to current and traditional concerns in philosophy – experimental, analytic, and applied. It then assembles a psycholinguistic toolkit and demonstrates through two studies how potentially questionnaire-based measures can be combined with process measures to garner evidence for specific stereotypical inferences and study when they ‘go through’ and influence our thinking. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy’s much-discussed ‘restrictionist’ program seeks to delineate the extent to which philosophers may legitimately rely on intuitions about possible cases. The present paper shows that this program can be (i) put to the service of diagnostic problem-resolution (in the wake of J.L. Austin) and (ii) pursued by constructing and experimentally testing psycholinguistic explanations of intuitions which expose their lack of evidentiary value: The paper develops a psycholinguistic explanation of paradoxical intuitions that are prompted by verbal case-descriptions, and presents two (...) experiments that support the explanation. This debunking explanation helps resolve philosophical paradoxes about perception (known as ‘arguments from hallucination’). (shrink)

Conceptul de dreptate socială este unul dintre cele mai controversate concepte ale filosofiei politice. Foarte puține aspecte legate de acest concept nu sunt înconjurate de controverse și dezbateri argumentative. Unele dintre cele mai importante astfel de controverse sunt cele legate de definirea, de specificarea și de legitimitatea lui. Prima este, în esență, o controversă în privința răspunsului la următoarea întrebare: care este conceptul care surprinde cel mai bine trăsătura fundamentală a dreptății și nedreptății sociale? A doua este o controversă în (...) privința exigențelor sau a principiilor „corecte” ale dreptății sociale. În sfărșit, a treia este o controversă pe marginea acceptabilității conceptului de dreptate socială. În studiul de față prezint pe scurt principalele idei, poziții și argumente invocate de filosofii politici recenți în cadrul fiecăreia dintre aceste controverse. (shrink)

In its most part, this article is a critique of three of the most common ways of defining egalitarianism: 1) egalitarianism is a trend of thought in political philosophy to which belong (all) philosophers who support a form of equality, whatever it may be, between all members of a community; 2) egalitarianism is a trend of thought in political philosophy which has as a ultimate or foundational value equality in the abstract sense of treating all people as equals; and 3) (...) egalitarianism is a trend of thought in political philosophy that defends equality in the distribution of certain goods or resources. In the last part of the article I defend the idea that egalitarianism is much better described as a trend of thought in political philosophy that defends a substantial equality between all members of a community as a ultimate principle of social justice. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive states of affairs to be located in the future not the past, and for negative states of affairs to be located in the past not the future. Three explanations for future-bias have been posited: the temporal metaphysics explanation, the practical irrelevance explanation, and the three mechanisms explanation. Understanding what explains future-bias is important not only for better understanding the phenomenon itself, but also because many philosophers think that which explanation is (...) the correct one has implications for our evaluation of the normative status of future-bias. In this paper we focus on the connection between future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry. The latter refers to the fact that people tend to assign more value to a state of affairs when it is located in the future, as opposed to being equidistant in the past. All three candidate explanations offered for future-bias proceed by explaining the temporal value asymmetry, and then supposing that future-bias is simply a manifestation of that asymmetry. Recently, however, it has been argued that the conditions under which people display the temporal value asymmetry and future-bias are different, and that this is reason to doubt that the latter is a manifestation of the former. In this paper we empirically test one response to this argument against the manifestation thesis—the simulation response—according to which once we control for the degree to which people can simulate the object of their preference, we find that people display future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry in the same conditions. We find no evidence in favour of the simulation response. Moreover, our results support some previous research that suggests that the temporal value asymmetry is less robust than previously thought, and this in itself casts doubt on the idea that future bias is just a manifestation of this asymmetry. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen and Andrew Mason have recently argued, against many contemporary philosophers, that feasibility is not a legitimate constraint in theorizing about social justice. Their main argument is that principles of justice are logically independent of issues of feasibility and, consequently, feasibility has no bearing on the correctness of these principles. This article is a critical examination of three attempts to show that Cohen and Mason’s argument is unsound. The examined attempts are those of Harry Brighouse, Collin Farrelly, and (...) David Miller. I argue that all these arguments are based on false, unjustified or implausible, premises and/or assumptions. Consequently, they cannot discredit the soundness of Cohen and Mason’s argument and of the thesis that feasibility is not, in fact, a legitimate constraint in theorizing about social justice. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze a view that is increasingly spreading among philosophers and even physicians. Many of them believe that it is right to apply the principle of responsibility for illness in the allocation of health care. I attempt to show that this idea is unacceptable.

Several important philosophical problems (including the problems of perception, free will, and scepticism) arise from antinomies that are developed through philosophical paradoxes. The critical strand of ordinary language philosophy (OLP), as practiced by J.L. Austin, provides an approach to such ‘antinomic problems’ that proceeds from an examination of ‘ordinary language’ (how people ordinarily talk about the phenomenon of interest) and ‘common sense’ (what they commonly think about it), and deploys findings to show that the problems at issue are artefacts of (...) fallacious reasoning. The approach is capable, and in need of, empirical development. Proceeding from a case-study on Austin’s paradigmatic treatment of the problem of perception, this paper identifies the key empirical assumptions informing the approach, assesses them in the light of empirical findings about default inferences, contextualisation failures, and belief fragmentation, and explores how these findings can be deployed to address the problem of perception. This facilitates a novel resolution of the problem of perception. Proceeding from this paradigm, the paper proposes ‘experimental critical OLP’ as a new research program in experimental philosophy that avoids apparent non-sequiturs of OLP, extends and transforms experimental philosophy’s ‘sources program’, and provides a promising new strategy for deploying empirical findings about how people ordinarily talk and think about phenomena, to address longstanding philosophical problems. (shrink)

This paper empirically raises and examines the question of ‘conceptual control’: To what extent are competent thinkers able to reason properly with new senses of words? This question is crucial for conceptual engineering. This prominently discussed philosophical project seeks to improve our representational devices to help us reason better. It frequently involves giving new senses to familiar words, through normative explanations. Such efforts enhance, rather than reduce, our ability to reason properly, only if competent language users are able to abide (...) by the relevant explanations, in language comprehension and verbal reasoning. This paper examines to what extent we have such ‘conceptual control’ in reasoning with new senses. The paper draws on psycholinguistic findings about polysemy processing to render this question empirically tractable and builds on recent findings from experimental philosophy to address it. The paper identifies a philosophically important gap in thinkers’ control over the key process of stereotypical enrichment and discusses how conceptual engineers can use empirical methods to work around this gap in conceptual control. The paper thus empirically demonstrates the urgency of the question of conceptual control and explains how experimental philosophy can empirically address the question, to render conceptual engineering feasible as an ameliorative enterprise. (shrink)

One of the most important ideas of our times is the conviction that, despite their diversity, all humans have an equal basic moral status (or an equal fundamental worth and dignity), that they are, as Thomas Jefferson famously stated, “created equals” and they should (because they are entitled to) be treated as equals. In this article I defend the suggestion – stated by philosophers like Brian Barry, Ronald Dworkin or Joel Feinberg – that the principle of equal human worth is (...) indemonstrable and has no other basis than itself. I argue, essentially, that all other theories about the basis of equality are false or at least problematic. In the last section I also try to show that, most probably, the truth of the principle of basic human equality cannot be established through any of the usual methods of argumentation and/or justification. (shrink)

În acest capitol prezint neutralismul liberal urmând, în esență, patru pași. Încep cu definirea neutralismului și cu unele precizări și explicații importante pentru înțelegerea adecvată a susținerii lui fundamentale. Al doilea pas este dedicat evidențierii și explicării celor mai importante argumente neutraliste. Mă concentrez apoi asupra caracterizării principalelor versiuni ale acestei teorii politice și a reliefării argumentelor pe baza cărora se legitimează ele. În sfârșit, într-un ultim pas, expun obiecțiile sau argumentele anti-neutraliste și – totodată – replicile neutraliștilor liberali la (...) ele. Și de această dată este vorba, trebuie să precizez, doar despre obiecțiile cele mai importante (și mai „rezonabile”), nu despre toate obiecțiile, mai mult sau mai puțin plauzibile, care au fost aduse neutralismului de criticii săi. (shrink)

Unul dintre cele mai importante subiecte de dezbatere în contextul deliberărilor publice privind revizuirea Constituției a fost lansat, fără îndoială, de solicitările de revizuire a ei in sens creștin. Solicitările în discuție au fost făcute, după cum este cunoscut, de Sinodul mitropolitan al Mitropoliei Moldovei și Bucovinei în 5 martie 2013. Potrivit acestor solicitări, ar fi dezirabil ca, printre altele, noua Constituție „să facă referire la numele lui Dumnezeu”, să „sublinieze ... importanța tradiției creștine a poporului român”, să evidențieze „rolul (...) pe care Biserica Ortodoxă Română l-a avut și îl are în istoria țării” și – nu în ultimul rând – să recunoască „necesitatea predării religiei în școală.” In acest articol, explorez, în limitele spațiului pe care îl am la dispoziție, fiecare dintre aceste solicitări. Obiectivul meu fundamental este acela de a arăta că – și de a explica de ce – niciuna dintre ele nu este o solicitare „rezonabilă”. Prin aceasta înțeleg că niciuna dintre solicitările Sinodului mitropolitan al Mitropoliei Moldovei și Bucovinei nu este suficient susținută argumentativ și – mai ales – că niciuna dintre ele nu este compatibilă cu idealul unei societăți organizate și guvernate în baza unor valori precum libertatea, egalitatea și echitatea în relațiile dintre cetățeni. Ceea ce sper să arăt este, cu alte cuvinte, că, dat fiind respectul pe care îl datorăm acestor valori, România trebuie să rămână și în viitor un stat laic sau, poate mai corect spus, unul neutru din punct de vedere religios, așa cum statuează în prezent articolul 9 al Legii nr. 489/2006 privind libertatea religioasă și regimul general al cultelor. Articolul precizează, reamintesc, că în România „nu există religie de stat” și că „statul este neutru față de orice credință religioasă sau ideologie atee”. (shrink)

Un articol cu un asemenea titlu pare să nu mai aibă nevoie de precizări referitoare la obiectivul său. Ce alt obiectiv aş putea avea decât acela de a răspunde la întrebarea din titlu? Principalul meu scop este, într-adevăr, definirea şi prezentarea cât mai exhaustivă a tezelor multiculturalismului (în limitele de spaţiu de care trebuie să ţin seama în cadrul articolului). Am în vedere, trebuie menționat, doar multiculturalismul ca teorie politică normativă, nu şi multiculturalismul ca multiculturalitate sau pluralism cultural, ca prezenţă (...) pe teritoriul unui stat a mai mult de o comunitate culturală (etnică, naţională, religioasă) care doreşte să-şi protejeze identitatea, valorile şi practicile pe care le împărtăşeşc membrii săi. (shrink)

În acest capitol îmi revine sarcina de a prezenta unul dintre cele mai influente și mai dinamice curente din filosofia politică actuală. Este vorba, desigur, despre curentul care dă titlul acestui capitol: egalitarianismul.

Lately, more and more authors have asserted their belief that one of the criteria which, together with the medical ones, can and should be applied in the policy of selecting and/or prioritizing the patients in need for the allocation of medical resources with limited availability, is the principle of individual responsibility for illness. My intention in this study is to highlight some very serious obstacles looming against the attempt to apply this principle in the distribution of the medical services with (...) limited availability. Although there are numerous such obstacles, I shall only discuss five of them (the most important, in my opinion). These are: 1) the impossibility to establish with certainty whether a patient got ill due to his lifestyle; 2) the lack of a feasible and reliable method of establishing an individual’s responsibility for his lifestyle; 3) a patient’s right to privacy; 4) some moral requirements and principles and, last but not least, 5) the ethics of the medical profession. (shrink)

I argue that influential recent discussions have whitewashed blame, characterizing it in ways that deemphasize or ignore its morally problematic features. I distinguish “definitional,” “creeping,” and “emphasis” whitewash, and argue that they play a central role in overall endorsements of blame by T.M. Scanlon, George Sher, and Miranda Fricker. In particular, these endorsements treat blame as appropriate by definition (Scanlon), or as little more than a wish (Sher), and infer from blame's having one useful function that it is a good (...) practice overall (Fricker). I use an analogy with revenge to illustrate the mechanisms of whitewashing, including broadening a concept to include available alternatives to it and inference from one feature of a practice to an overall conclusion about that practice. Several features of blame make it particularly prone to whitewashing, including blamers' personal or emotional stake in blaming and widespread disagreement about the nature of blame. I argue that a non‐whitewashing treatment of blame must pay closer attention both to blame's harms, and to comparisons between blame and alternative, non‐blaming reactions. (shrink)

The paper is an intervention in the dispute about the moralism of the recent realist trend in political philosophy. It is particularly focused on analysing the debate on this subject between Niklas Erman and Eva Möller (2015a; 2015b) and Robert Jubb and Enzo Rossi (2015a; 2015b). Examining the main arguments of both parties, I argue that realists (i.e., Jubb and Rossi) lost the debate, that realism is, in fact, moralism in disguise, and that its main methodological request – giving up (...) „pre-political” moral principles and values in political philosophy – is „unrealistic” (i.e., unfeasible). (shrink)

In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are ‘killed’ (defeated) by contextual information but kept cognitively alive by the psycholinguistic phenomenon of linguistic salience bias. Extending ‘evidentiary’ experimental philosophy, this paper examines whether the ‘zombie argument’ against materialism (...) is built on zombie intuitions. We examine the hypothesis that contextually defeated stereotypical inferences from the noun ‘zombie’ influence intuitions about ‘philosophical zombies’. We document framing effects (‘zombie’ vs ‘duplicate’) predicted by the hypothesis. Findings undermine intuitions about the conceivability of ‘philosophical zombies’ and address the philosophical ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Findings support a deflationary response: The impression that principled obstacles prevent scientific explanation of how physical processes give rise to conscious experience is generated by philosophical arguments that rely on epistemically deficient intuitions. (shrink)

Nu cu foarte mult timp în urmă, grupul de teorie socială şi politică din cadrul proiectului POSDRU 89/1.5/S/56815 „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere-cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”, a publicat, tot la editura Institutul European, lucrarea Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Volumul de faţă reprezintă un nou pas al grupului nostru de lucru în realizarea proiectului inaugurat prin publicarea acelei lucrări. Este vorba, reamintesc, despre proiectul elaborării unor volume care să-i ajute pe cei interesaţi în iniţierea (lor sau a altora) în teoria (şi în special (...) filosofia) politică, mai ales în dezvoltările sale conceptuale, argumentative şi problematologice recente. Desigur, nu am intenţionat în mod expres ca aceste volume să fie utile doar în această direcţie. Speranţa noastră a fost, dimpotrivă, ca ele să fie interesante şi pentru cercetătorii cu experienţă în investigarea şi dezbaterea temelor abordate în cadrul lor, mai ales pentru că unele capitole prezintă idei, argumente sau perspective originale, care, credem noi, merită atenţia critică a comunităţii cercetătorilor români. Menirea lor fundamentală rămâne totuşi, în intenţia noastră, cea introductivă. Aşa cum recunoşteam în cuvântul său înainte, Concepte şi teorii socialpolitice nu este deloc un volum exhaustiv. Teorii şi ideologii politice reprezintă, în bună măsură, şi o încercare de a compensa cumva acest „defect” al volumului în cauză. Desigur, nici publicarea lui nu ne permite să susţinem că am atins obiectivul oferirii unei introduceri cât mai complete în teoria/filosofia politică actuală. Deşi Teorii şi ideologii politice prezintă câteva dintre cele mai importante teorii sau ideologii politice contemporane, există multe altele care nu sunt prezentate (sau cel puţin nu sunt prezentate atât de detaliat pe cât ar fi meritat) între paginile sale. Mă refer aici, spre exemplu, la libertarianism, comunitarianism, cosmopolitism sau capabilism (ca teorie a dezvoltării umane). Ne consolăm însă în baza a trei argumente. Unul este acela că, aşa cum se poate observa cu uşurinţă din cuprinsul său, cartea de faţă prezintă totuşi un număr important dintre principalele teorii şi ideologii politice recente (unele dintre ele pentru prima dată în literatura românească de specialitate). Al doilea este acela că unele dintre teoriile sau ideologiile politice care nu sunt abordate aici au beneficiat deja de prezentări competente şi atente la noi (unele dintre ele chiar în Concepte şi teorii social-politice). În sfârşit, al treilea argument este acela că sperăm cu toţii că prezentul volum nu reprezintă ultimul nostru pas în realizarea obiectivului menţionat în debutul acestei intervenţii. Sperăm, altfel spus, să putem prezenta acele teorii sau ideologii politice care nu şi-au găsit locul între paginile lui sau ale celui precedent cu o altă ocazie. Ţin să precizez însă că volumul pe care îl introduc prin această intervenţie nu este întrutotul o continuare a celui precedent, deşi între ele există, desigur, destule afinităţi, relaţii şi continuităţi tematice. Mai exact, el nu ar putea fi descris totalmente neproblematic ca reprezentând „al doilea tom” al volumului Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Titlul său este menit să indice acest lucru. Dacă lucrarea anterioară era centrată pe prezentarea unora dintre principalele concepte ale teoriei/filosofiei social-politice contemporane, cartea de faţă prezintă câteva dintre principalele teorii sau ideologii dezvoltate şi apărate de politologii, filosofii, economiştii sau „ideologii” politici contemporani. Nici de această dată nu voi încerca să rezum principalele idei expuse sau metodologii utilizate de către autori în prezentarea teoriilor sau ideologiilor politice care se regăsesc între paginile ce urmează. Temeiul meu este acelaşi: acolo unde au considerat că este cazul, autorii capitolelor şi-au rezumat ei înşişi ideile prezentate sau/şi metodologiile utilizate. În plus, cititorul interesat să-şi facă o idee prealabilă despre conţinutul ideatic şi problematologic al cărţii dispune de un rezumat al ei (în limbile engleză şi franceză) în finalul său. În consecinţă, mă voi mulţumi să închei doar prin a exprima încă o dată speranţa noastră că această carte se va dovedi utilă celor cărora li se adresează cu preponderenţă. Sperăm, în alte cuvinte, ca ea să le fie de ajutor în înţelegerea şi evaluarea adecvată a teoriilor şi ideologiilor pe care le prezintă. Şi mai important, sperăm că ea îi va stimula să caute să aprofundeze cercetarea acestor teorii şi ideologii şi – mai ales – să iniţieze propriile investigaţii sistematice şi riguroase în această privinţă. Dezvoltarea politologiei şi a filosofiei politice în spaţiul românesc, ca să nu mai vorbim despre clarificarea şi fundamentarea cât mai completă şi adecvată a opţiunilor ideologice ale partidelor politice din România, au nevoie de acest lucru. (shrink)

"Our literature is replete with complaints about the chaotic state of the systematics of psychoses and every psychiatrist knows that it is impossible to come to any common understanding on the basis of the old diagnostic labels. ... Thus, not even the masters of science can make themselves understood on the basis of the old concepts and with many patients the number of diagnoses made equals the number of institutions they have been too. ... Errors are the greatest obstacles to (...) the progress of science; to correct such errors is of more practical value than to achieve new knowledge. We have here eliminated chaos of terms behind which useful concepts of disease were mistakenly sought; we have eliminated a veritable forest of boundary posts, not one of which indicated any natural line of demarcation. ... By the term „dementia praecox“ or „schizophrenia“ we designate a group of psychoses whose course is at times chronic, at times marked by intermittent attacks, and which can stop or retrograde at any stage, but does not permit a full restitutio ad integrum. The disease is characterized by a specific type of alteration of thinking, feeling, and relation to the external world which appears nowhere else in this particular fashion." Eugen Bleuler. Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias. Translated by Joseph Zinkin. International Universities Press, New York, 1950. (shrink)

Pe parcursul anului trecut, la Institutul de Cercetări Economice şi Sociale „Gheorghe Zane” din Iaşi, a avut loc workshopul „Concepte şi argumente în filosofia social-politică. Interpretări şi dezbateri”. Workshopul s-a desfăşurat în cadrul proiectului POSDRU „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere: cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”. Cartea de faţă este principalul rezultat al acestui workshop. Ea a fost gândită şi propusă spre publicare în primul rând din speranţa că va fi utilă celor care doresc să se iniţieze – sau celor care încearcă să-i iniţieze (...) pe alţii – în teoria şi filosofia social-politică (mai ales cea contemporană). Aceasta cu atât mai mult cu cât, la noi, lucrările de acest tip (fie semnate de autori români, fie traduceri) sunt încă destul de rare. Mă refer aici la lucrările care acordă o atenţie specială (şi) filosofiei politice (teoriei politice normative), nu doar ştiinţei politice sau politologiei (teoriei politice empirice). Dacă cele din urmă apar din ce în ce mai frecvent în ultima vreme, cele dintâi rămân, din păcate, foarte puţine, chiar insuficiente. Cartea nu este nici pe departe una exhaustivă. În ciuda acestui „defect”, cred că ea îşi poate îndeplini totuşi obiectivul fundamental, fie şi numai pentru că oferă analize, prezentări şi comentarii despre câteva dintre cele mai importante concepte şi teorii din teoria socială şi politică recentă. Mai mult, în cadrul ei sunt discutate inclusiv unele concepte sau/şi teorii încă puţin analizate la noi (precum „multiculturalismul”, „dreptatea socială”, „genul” sau „democraţia deliberativă”). Se obişnuieşte uneori ca autorul introducerii unui volum de acest tip să prezinte în rezumat şi principalele idei apărate sau/şi metodologii utilizate de autorii fiecăruia dintre capitole. Eu nu voi face acest lucru. Motivul? Aş risca să fiu redundant, de vreme ce astfel de precizări şi rezumate au fost deja realizate de autorii volumului, chiar în debutul capitolelor pe care le semnează. Acestea fiind spuse, ţin să mai evidenţiez doar un singur lucru: aşa cum se va observa cu siguranţă, multe dintre capitolele lucrării nu sunt simple texte introductive (deşi au, fără îndoială, şi o astfel de dimensiune). Altfel spus, autorii acestor capitole nu s-au mulţumit să prezinte doar ideile, argumentele sau teoriile altor autori (şi în special ale celor consideraţi de referinţă) în problemele pe care le analizează. De multe ori, ei prezintă, dimpotrivă, şi idei, opinii, interpretări, argumente, perspective sau chiar teorii ori măcar „semiteorii” proprii asupra conceptelor şi problemelor pe care le abordează. Acest lucru nu ar trebui să fie surprinzător. Pentru fiecare dintre autorii capitolelor din acest volum, conceptele şi problemele pe care le prezintă aici constituie o preocupare sistematică şi constantă, dacă nu chiar preocuparea lor fundamentală, cel puţin în ultimii ani. De altfel, cel puţin în România, preocupările şi contribuţiile în domeniu ale multora dintre ei sunt deja cunoscute şi comentate, fie şi doar în cercul restrâns al specialiştilor şi al celor interesaţi de teoria social-politică. (shrink)

The volume aims to clarify and argue in support of the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory, as it is defined and used especially by (some of) the political philosophers working on the topic of social justice. In the process of trying to achieve this aim, the volume proposes, as well, a series of analyses concerning the other major problem raised by the ideal-nonideal distinction in political theory: the problem of the soundness of ideal theory as a method of specifying (...) the concept of justice and/or as a guide for political action, institutions and policies. Except for the foreword (which sets its scene and explorative framework) and the afterword (which concludes its argumentative approach and reminds some of its key explanations and observations), the volume is organized in three chapters. The first chapter discusses John Rawls` view on the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory. Its basic intention is to clarify, assess and synthetize the main claims and theses specific to the Rawlsian outlook. This analysis is followed, in the second chapter, by an investigation of the main post-Rawlsian contributions to the project of clarifying the ideal-nonideal distinction in theorizing justice. The third chapter rejects the claim according to which the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory is unjustified or, at least, not categorical. Based on its argumentative and explanatory undertaking, the book proposes the following simple definition of the ideal-nonideal distinction in theorizing justice: ideal theory is the theory aiming to offer an (adequate) answer to the question “what is social justice?”. In other words, ideal theory is the theory of defining or specifying the concept of social justice. Nonideal theory is, instead, the area of academic research interested in answering (and bound to answer) all the other imperative questions about justice and injustice: „is social justice an achievable ideal here and now?”, „which are the best policies in correcting or mitigating the current social injustices?”, „which is the most appropriate strategy for achieving the institutional design that best realizes the principles of justice?”, „in what way are the duties of justice affected when the others fail to conform to these duties?”, „which are the requirements of retributive justice?” or „which are the principles of rectificatory justice?”. (shrink)

This book advances an examination of the main arguments and counter-arguments put forward by the advocates of realism in political philosophy in support of the two methodological theses they defend: 1) that political philosophy is not and cannot be understood (just) as a branch of ethics or as „applied moral philosophy” (as moderate realists claim); and 2) that political philosophy should be done completely “outside ethics”, i.e., that it should stop using arguments based on “pre-political” moral principles or values (as (...) radical realists claim). The book pleads for four main conclusions: 1) that radical realism is nothing but moralism in disguise and that its methodological request – giving up moral principles or values in political philosophy – is „unrealistic” (unfeasible), as long as no plausible (i.e., egalitarian) account of political legitimacy or authority can be grounded without appeal to the principle of basic human equality or the principle of treating people as (free and) equals; 2) that political philosophy is not quite accurately described as a branch of ethics, as moralist political philosophers usually do, but this is not because of the reasons usually offered by moderate realists, but because political philosophy includes at least one project that cannot be unquestionably subsumed to this characterization (i.e., the project of the purely epistemic justification of liberal democracy); 3) that moralism is a methodology that political philosophy is perfectly justified to use and no (radical) realist counter-argument touches its validity and necessity; and 4) that all objections brought in the realists’ crusade against moralism are not tenable (most of them being the fruit of serious misunderstandings or distortions of the positions the philosophers accused of this “methodological vice” endorse, the result of sophistic reasoning or of confusions, such as the confusion between political philosophy and political science, between normative and descriptive, between political philosophy and motivational speech for citizens or politicians, or the confusion between moralism as a methodology of political philosophy – or as a thesis about the proper methodology of political philosophy – and moralism as a theory or an evaluative practice concerning politics and political behavior). The four conclusions can be synthesized in the general conclusion that realists – be they radical or moderate – are wrong when they argue (and believe they have good reasons for the thesis) that political philosophy is not (just) a branch of ethics or for the thesis that it should be done completely “outside ethics”. The most central questions of political philosophy are, in their overwhelming majority, moral questions (about the political). In addition, the recourse to “pre-political” moral principles or values is imperative and inescapable for political philosophy. Therefore, political philosophy has no other option than remaining what, essentially, it has ever been: an area of moral philosophy, a discipline whose research interests are continuous with those of ethics. As its title suggests, this book can be described, as well, as a (new) defence of this general conclusion concerning the specific of and the path to follow by political philosophy. (shrink)

How does experimental philosophy address philosophical questions and problems? That is: What projects does experimental philosophy pursue? What is their philosophical relevance? And what empirical methods do they employ? Answers to these questions will reveal how experimental philosophy can contribute to the longstanding ambition of placing philosophy on the ‘secure path of a science’, as Kant put it. We argue that experimental philosophy has introduced a new methodological perspective – a ‘meta-philosophical naturalism’ that addresses philosophical questions about a phenomenon by (...) empirically investigating how people think about this phenomenon. This chapter asks how this novel perspective can be successfully implemented: How can the empirical investigation of how people think about something address genuinely philosophical problems? And what methods – and, specifically, what methods beyond the questionnaire – can this investigation employ? We first review core projects of experimental philosophy and raise the question of their philosophical relevance. For ambitious answers, we turn to experimental philosophy’s most direct historical precursor, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and discuss empirical implementations of two of its research programmes that use experimental methods from psycholinguistics and corpus methods from the digital humanities. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom holds that the von Neumann entropy corresponds to thermodynamic entropy, but Hemmo and Shenker (2006) have recently argued against this view by attacking von Neumann's (1955) argument. I argue that Hemmo and Shenker's arguments fail due to several misunderstandings: about statistical-mechanical and thermodynamic domains of applicability, about the nature of mixed states, and about the role of approximations in physics. As a result, their arguments fail in all cases: in the single-particle case, the finite particles case, and the (...) infinite particles case. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with contestation. We (...) illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen and those of green hydrogen. We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

This paper provides new tools for philosophical argument analysis and fresh empirical foundations for ‘critical’ ordinary language philosophy. Language comprehension routinely involves stereotypical inferences with contextual defeaters. J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia first mooted the idea that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from verbal case-descriptions drive some philosophical paradoxes; these engender philosophical problems that can be resolved by exposing the underlying fallacies. We build on psycholinguistic research on salience effects to explain when and why even perfectly competent speakers cannot help making (...) stereotypical inferences which are contextually inappropriate. We analyse a classical paradox about perception, suggest it relies on contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance-verbs, and show that the conditions we identified as leading to contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are met in formulations of the paradox. Three experiments use a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to document the predicted inappropriate inferences, in English, German, and Japanese. The cross-linguistic study allows us to assess the wider relevance of the proposed analysis. Our findings open up new perspectives for ‘evidential’ experimental philosophy. (shrink)

I suggest that the current interest in philosophical counseling is comparable to the situation in the Sixties when many philosophy graduates entertained false hopes of nonacademic philosophical employment. I describe my own experience as a welfare worker, in the course of which my philosophical training proved useful in various ways; I maintain, though, that there was nothing especially philosophical in this. I then consider some ways in which philosophical counseling might be distinctively philosophical. I conclude that philosophical training, as we (...) know it, is in any case inadequate for philosophical counseling and would need to be supplemented by psychological and other training. (shrink)

Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments involve unusual cases. We present empirical reasons to doubt the reliability of intuitive judgments and conclusions about such cases. Inferences and intuitions prompted by verbal case descriptions are influenced by routine comprehension processes which invoke stereotypes. We build on psycholinguistic findings to determine conditions under which the stereotype associated with the most salient sense of a word predictably supports inappropriate inferences from descriptions of unusual (stereotype-divergent) cases. We conduct an experiment that combines plausibility ratings (...) with pupillometry to document this “salience bias.” We find that under certain conditions, competent speakers automatically make stereotypical inferences they know to be inappropriate. (shrink)

Until recently, experimental philosophy has been associated with the questionnaire-based study of intuitions; however, experimental philosophers now adapt a wide range of empirical methods for new philosophical purposes. New methods include paradigms for behavioural experiments from across the social sciences as well as computational methods from the digital humanities that can process large bodies of text and evidence. This book offers an accessible overview of these exciting innovations. The volume brings together established and emerging research leaders from several areas of (...) experimental philosophy to explore how new empirical methods can contribute to philosophical debates. Each chapter presents one or several methods new to experimental philosophy, demonstrating their application in a key area of philosophy and discussing their strengths and limitations. Methods covered include eye tracking, virtual reality technology, neuroimaging, statistical learning, and experimental economics as well as corpus linguistics, visualisation techniques and data and text mining. The volume explores their use in moral philosophy and moral psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the history of ideas. Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy is essential reading for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Preparing general relativity for quantization in the Hamiltonian approach leads to the `problem of time,' rendering the world fundamentally timeless. One proposed solution is the `thermal time hypothesis,' which defines time in terms of states representing systems in thermal equilibrium. On this view, time is supposed to emerge thermodynamically even in a fundamentally timeless context. Here, I develop the worry that the thermal time hypothesis requires dynamics -- and hence time -- to get off the ground, thereby running into worries (...) of circularity. (shrink)

We blame faulty brakes for a car crash, or rain for our bad mood. This “merely causal” blame is usually seen as uninteresting. I argue that it is crucial for understanding the interpersonal blame with which we target ourselves and each other. The two are often difficult to distinguish, in a way that plagues philosophical discussions of blame. And interpersonal blame is distinctive, I argue, partly in its causal focus: its attention to a person as cause. I argue that this (...) causal focus helps explain several central characteristics of interpersonal blame: its tendency to exaggerate a person’s causal role, its weakening through attention to personal history or thoughts about determinism, its characteristic ‘force’ or ‘sting’, and our sense that blame is often harmful or unfair. I conclude by drawing out one implication of blame's causal focus: in a certain range of cases, blame is partly under our voluntary control. (shrink)

Empirical evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias, another is future-bias, and a third is present-bias. Philosophers are concerned with the normative status of these time-biases. They have argued that, at least in part, the normative status of these biases depends on the extent to which they tend to promote, or frustrate, wellbeing, where “wellbeing” is taken to be of fundamental value. Since near-bias is thought to be associated with impulsivity, lack of self-control, and poor long-term health (...) and financial outcomes, it has often been supposed that it is associated with lower wellbeing. On those grounds, philosophers have argued that near-bias is rationally impermissible. By contrast, philosophical views about the normative status of future-bias have been mixed, with some arguing that future-bias is impermissible because, they think, it frustrates wellbeing, and others arguing that it is at least permissible (and perhaps obligatory) because it is the product of mechanisms whose functioning can be expected to promote wellbeing. However, to date there are no studies that have directly probed how time-biases correlate with wellbeing. Since it's not a settled matter which psychological mechanisms underlie time-biases, it is not uncontroversial which things serve as proxies for these preferences. We directly empirically investigate the connection between time-biases and measures of wellbeing, to see which of these biases is associated with promoting, or frustrating wellbeing. Contrary to expectation, we found no evidence that near-bias or present-bias are associated with frustrating wellbeing on any of the constructs we measured. On the other hand, and contrary to what some philosophers have supposed, we found that future-bias was associated with higher measures of wellbeing on several measures. We consider the implications of these findings for the evaluation of the normative status of these time biases. (shrink)

Intuitive judgments elicited by verbal case-descriptions play key roles in philosophical problem-setting and argument. Experimental philosophy's ‘sources project’ seeks to develop psychological explanations of philosophically relevant intuitions which help us assess our warrant for accepting them. This article develops a psycholinguistic explanation of intuitions prompted by philosophical case-descriptions. For proof of concept, we target intuitions underlying a classic paradox about perception, trace them to stereotype-driven inferences automatically executed in verb comprehension, and employ a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to elicit the relevant (...) stereotypical associations of perception- and appearance-verbs. We obtain a debunking explanation that resolves the philosophical paradox. (shrink)

Some conceptions of the role of philosophers in climate change focus mainly on theoretical progress in philosophy, or on philosophers as individual citizens. Against these views, I defend a skill view: philosophers should use our characteristic skills as philosophers to combat climate change by integrating it into our teaching, research, service, and community engagement. A focus on theoretical progress, citizenship, expertise, virtue, ability, social role, or power, rather than on skill, can allow for some of these contributions. But the skill (...) view, I argue, uniquely captures the breadth of philosophers’ role in climate change; promises to make us more effective in practice; and offers a compelling way to overcome our own lingering climate denial by integrating climate change into all aspects of philosophical activity. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer attempts to present a coherent view of panentheism that eschews Pickwickian senses of “in” and aligns itself with, and builds upon, familiar diagrammed portrayals of panentheism. The account is accordingly spatial-locative and moreover accepts the proposal of R.T. Mullins that absolute space and time be regarded as attributes of God. In addition, however, it argues that a substantive parthood relation between the world and God is required. Pfeifer’s preferred version of panpsychism, viz. panintentionalism, is thrown into the (...) mix as an optional add-on. On this account, God is conceived of as a “spiritual field” whose nature can be made more intelligible by regarding “God” as having a mass-noun sense in some contexts. Pfeifer closes with the suggestion that we look to topology and mereology for further development of the position outlined in his paper. (shrink)

In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function. Recent works in quantum foundations suggest that it is viable to consider a mixed-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a (mixed-state) density matrix. Here, we develop the conceptual foundations for decoherence and branching in a mixed-state multiverse, and extend the standard Everettian justifications for the Born rule to this setting. This (...) extended framework provides a unification of 'classical' and 'quantum' probabilities, and additional theoretical benefits, for the Everettian picture. (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)

When a technology is seen as the right solution to a recognized problem, the development of alternative technologies comes under threat. To secure much-needed resources, proponents of alternative technologies must, in these conditions, restart societal discussion on the status quo, a process at once technological and discursive known as ‘path creation’. In this article, we investigate discussion-restarting strategies employed by supporters of emerging technologies in the field of solar fuels, particularly the advocates of a technology referred to as ‘artificial photosynthesis’. (...) For illustrative purposes we explore four such strategies: revisiting weak spots, resizing the problem, redefining the game, and renegotiating labels. We conclude with a methodological reflection on the empirical study of discursive strategies in a socio-technical system. We further suggest a more systematic application of discourse-analytical and argumentation-theoretical insights that can complement current scholarship on path dependence and path creation. (shrink)

Psycholinguistic methods hold great promise for experimental philosophy. Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments proceed from verbal descriptions of possible cases. Many relevant intuitions and conclusions are driven by spontaneous inferences about what else must also be true in the cases described. Such inferences are continually made in language comprehension and production. This chapter explains how methods from psycholinguistics can be employed to study such routine automatic inferences, with a view to assessing intuitions and reconstructing arguments. We demonstrate how plausibility (...) ratings, pupillometry, and reading time measurements can be used to examine hypotheses about automatic inferences in speech and text comprehension. Two experiments on inferences from polysemous (perception-)verbs provide evidence of a potentially consequential ‘salience bias’. Findings help assess intuitions about unusual cases and analyse a philosophical paradox (‘argument from hallucination’). The paper thus illustrates how we can adapt psycholinguistic methods for philosophical purposes and demonstrates the methods’ philosophical usefulness. (shrink)

Taking the formal analogies between black holes and classical thermodynamics seriously seems to first require that classical thermodynamics applies in relativistic regimes. Yet, by scrutinizing how classical temperature is extended into special relativity, I argue that the concept falls apart. I examine four consilient procedures for establishing the classical temperature: the Carnot process, the thermometer, kinetic theory, and black-body radiation. I argue that their relativistic counterparts demonstrate no such consilience in defining the relativistic temperature. As such, classical temperature doesn’t appear (...) to survive a relativistic extension. I suggest two interpretations for this situation: eliminativism akin to simultaneity, or pluralism akin to rotation. (shrink)