Effective Altruism (EA) is both a philosophy and a movement. The main criticism on EA is that by donating to charities EA leaves fundamental moral issues such as global poverty and injustice intact. EA arguably does not promote radical institutional change which could lead to an ultimate eradication of the problems that may endanger people’s lives in the first place. In this article this critique is reinforced from a different point of view. The criticism on EA has been mainly on (...) the performative or the empirical aspect of the movement. That is, criticism on EA focuses on evaluating the practical realisation of its mandates with little, if any, evaluation on its philosophical foundation. My aim in this paper is to extend the critique but from a different angle, that is, by going back to its philosophical underpinnings. By exploring the philosophical foundation of EA, I would like to show how EA is not authentic altruism as it is founded on the sacrifice of the Other whom is supposed to be saved. (shrink)

Research on Peirce’s phaneroscopy has been done with and through the paradigm or the conceptual schema of “Being” — what has been critiqued by post-structuralist philosophers as the metaphysics of Being. Thus, such research is either limited to attempts to define “phaneron,” or to identify whether there is a particular and consistent meaning intention behind Peirce’s use of this term. Another problematic characteristic with such a way of engaging with phaneroscopy is the very anonymity of the schema of “Being.” While (...) all scholars admit to the universality of “phaneron,” rarely, if ever, do we see an account of how such universality can be instantiated. In this paper, I attempt to engage with phaneroscopy differently. Instead of presenting a better version of what phaneroscopy is, or making arguments about what is the case with phaneroscopy, both of which are ways of philosophising with “being,” I attempt to enact phaneroscopy. This would mean to undertake to follow Peirce’s instructions for the phaneroscopist and report the findings. Based on the latter, I shall analogise phaneron with the possibility of understanding. (shrink)

In Critical Philosophy and, particularly, phenomenology ‘intersubjectivity’ is a core theme of analysis. As Zahavi put it, intersubjectivity, “be it in the form of a concrete self—other relation, a socially structured life-world, or a transcendental principle of justification, is ascribed an absolutely central role by phenomenologists.” Yet, when dealt with in this way, ‘intersubjectivity,’ as a conceptual attempt to refer to our ontology, to who we are, conceals other phenomena. In this paper an attempt is being made to articulate the (...) phenomenon of authentic intersubjectivity by contrasting it with what we refer to as intersubjection, when only one subjectivity is expressing the Other by expressing the Other through the same, as in the case of empathy. Following the feminist critique we identify intersubjection as the tendency to reduce the Other to one’s own categories hence muting them or, at best, imposing on them a category which is intended from one subject only. Following Sartre, we articulate intersubjectivity as a reciprocal, bilateral relation where subjectivities are revealed to each other through the ontological structure of motivation/resistance. (shrink)